


Three Yard Radius

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:10:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The three of them grew up within arm's reach of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Yard Radius

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Revisionist History](https://archiveofourown.org/works/255896) by [candle_beck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck). 



> Originally posted November 2009.

Three Yard Radius  
By Candle Beck

 

When he was twelve years old, Eric Chavez got drunk for the first time with his best friend.

They were sitting in the backyard of Joey Han's house, formed into a loose circle on the grass with some other kids. Music bled from the open windows, party chatter rising and falling like a dying radio in the background. There was an older boy and girl making out in the shadows, her arms twisted around his back and pushing his shirt up, their mouths so wide you could see tongue, and Chavez thought that was kinda gross.

Eric Munson nudged him with the bottle of wine, and Chavez lifted it to his mouth with both hands. It still tasted like really old cough medicine, but his brains felt jelled, this happy sweaty thing happening just under his skin. There were good and bad parts, really confusing, and Chavez figured if he kept drinking eventually it would get either all good or all bad and either way he'd have a better idea of how to deal with it.

Across the circle was the tall kid they'd been warring with all summer. His face still bore faint yellow bruises from when Munson had kicked the shit out of him a couple days after school started, grinding his face into the dirt behind the elementary school auditorium. The kid had his legs folded and pulled against his chest, surfer shag that kept getting in his eyes, making him jerk his head back so regularly it was almost a rhythm. He was rubbing his chin on his knee, talking to a really pretty girl who was at least a freshman, but he didn't look nervous or anything, just kinda dopey and smiling a lot. Chavez watched him, eyes thin. He hated that guy.

Munson leaned heavily against him. His breath was too sweet, too hot.

"Like it?" Munson asked. "'cause I sure do."

"Brand new world," Chavez said in agreement.

His stomach was jumping, only partly from the drunk. Chavez was really excited about this whole thing, the long future ahead of him full of backyards and circles of people and bottles of wine. This was the coolest party they'd ever been invited to.

Then a bunch of kids came barreling out onto the patio, squawking many-headed beast, and Chavez heard, "Parents," then, "Neighbors," but it meant the same thing: _adults_. There was only ever one play.

Munson had Chavez's wrist and they were moving really fast and Chavez thought he might throw up. His head bounced, the sky slewing wildly back and forth. They squirmed into some bushes and Munson yelped when a branch stuck him, fell hard against the fence.

"Hey," someone said, high-voiced in surprise. It was that kid, that kid they hated.

Chavez rustled leaves out of his hair, trying not to sneeze, and scowled, but it didn't really take. The kid looked stupid, curled up around his knees again, dirt on his face, huge babyish eyes. He was drunk too, plainly swimming through it, and he wasn't a threat to anybody like this.

They were quiet for a minute, eyeing each other with blurred expressions. Then Munson said he might hurl and the kid said he should focus on a single point that didn't move, so Munson put his hands on Chavez's shoulders, told him, "Don't move, Ricky," and stared intently at his nose for half a minute.

After that the ice was pretty well broken. The kid's name was Barry Zito. He could throw a baseball seventy miles an hour. He had older sisters who told him all sorts of good stuff, wicked pranks and how to get over a hangover and how to sneak into movies. He cursed like a pro, even though he was so sweet- and young-looking. He was an entirely different person than Chavez had expected.

They got to talking about pitching. Zito gripped the air, showing Chavez his curveball and his circle-change, his wrist snapping. He knew what he was talking about, dropped the right names and rushed over the right descriptions, and Chavez got excited like every time he met someone else obsessed with baseball, a ready-made comrade.

Chavez got badly distracted by Zito. Munson was slumped against the fence muttering about splinters, and Chavez was supposed to be looking out for him, making sure he was okay. But Munson had always been okay before, and Zito was right there, talking so fast and bright.

Then Zito paused, eyebrows up and his mouth half-open, and Chavez wasn't really thinking about anything, just kinda swayed forward and kissed him like it was the next logical step. The kiss was off-line, bad-angled, shockingly warm and soft, and Chavez could feel Zito's teeth under his lips. A magical feeling went careening all through him.

Just then, Munson got sick against the fence.

Zito jerked back. His hand went to his mouth and Chavez didn't think he'd ever seen anybody with eyes so big before. His head was spinning, and Munson was gagging, coughing, pawing weakly at Chavez's arm. The smell was awful.

Chavez wanted to laugh, but all he could do was gape moronically at Zito. He wondered if this was something that happened a lot when guys got drunk, if they just randomly kissed each other. He felt way too young for this all of a sudden.

Munson spit a bunch of times, making weak disgusted noises. He rested against the fence for a minute, his face clean in the far-away starlight.

Munson said in a shriveled voice, "Truce."

Zito looked at him, his face working and Chavez couldn't read it. Chavez didn't know him hardly at all.

But after a second Zito nodded, said, "Truce," and then his eyes flicked back to Chavez's and Chavez's breath caught in his chest.

It was as easy as that. They ended the war, joined their forces. Forever after, the three of them were brothers in all but name.

*

They got most of the way through seventh grade by cheating off each other and charming their teacher, who called them the Three Amigos after some old movie she said was really funny even though she couldn't remember any of the jokes. Munson had a crush on her, always hanging around her desk and bringing her interesting-looking shells that he found at the beach. He blushed every time she talked to him.

Chavez and Zito rolled their eyes and made fun of him and that was new for Chavez, being able to talk about Eric Munson with someone who wasn't Eric Munson. It'd been just the two of them for better than half his life, growling through the San Diego suburbs on their pretend dirt bikes, playing catch until it was too dark to see, all those epic extra-inning games in the bleachers at the Jack Murph. It had always been "me and you." Chavez didn't usually talk about Munce in the third person.

But Zito fit. Chavez thought it was a baseball thing, probably, and he didn't wonder about it too much. The three of them sat around in their swimming trunks, doing puzzles up in Chavez's attic where the air was so thick and heated it was like a sauna, made them all dopey and slow and calm. They slept on the fold-out couch in Chavez's living room, the three of them strewn and sharp-angled to each other. They snuck out of their houses to meet up in the park past midnight, the one corner where the streetlight bled enough that they could play rundown as silent as mice on the grass.

Then it was Easter, and Chavez trudged along to Mass with his extended family, hair stiff from the stuff his mom combed into it, feet too big for his dress shoes even though he just got them at Christmas. He didn't want to tell his mom because she got her most frustrated when he grew out of things right after purchase and years before his brother Casey could use them. Chavez sat in the pew thinking about his poor toes for most of the sermon; he just wasn't in the mood for this stuff today. His neck was all sweaty under his tie.

After the service his folks were tied up gossiping with his aunts and uncles and Chavez was able to slip away from the mingling crowd. He took off his shoes and ran home sock-footed, keeping to the lawns as much as he could.

Chavez went around back to climb in his bedroom window because his mom hadn't let him put the dirty string with his key around his neck while wearing his church clothes, and found Zito in the backyard. Zito was throwing a dog-ravaged tennis ball against the fence, hollow thunking sound.

"Hey," Chavez said, yanking at his tie. He felt like he had a rash.

Zito was startled, drilled the ball into the dirt. He looked over his shoulder, face stricken and frantic for a second before he smirked.

"Lookit you, fancy boy," Zito said. Chavez threw a shoe at him.

"Shut up, I had to."

Chavez scratched irritably at his neck, raked his hands back and forth trying to mess up his hair but it was like plastic. Zito had his hands in his pockets, eyeing Chavez and looking kinda jittery. Chavez squinted at him.

"I thought you were gonna be hanging out with Munson," Chavez said, and Zito shrugged, his eyes down.

"Yeah, I was gonna. But instead, I came over here." Zito cleared his throat. Chavez looked at the patch of ground Zito was staring at, wondered what the hell was so interesting. "Can we go inside? Is your family coming home too?"

Not having the first clue why Zito was being so skittish, Chavez said, "No, it's cool," and jimmied open the window with his pocketknife, tossing his shoes in before following with himself. He knocked his Millennium Falcon model off the desk as he climbed down, but it didn't break. Zito came in after him, his legs seeming crazy long as he folded his body through the window.

Chavez set about changing his clothes, and Zito kinda shrank back against the door, his face turned resolutely down. His ears were red, like Munson blushing in front of their teacher. Chavez had his shirt off and he was halfway annoyed, thinking Zito was being weird on purpose.

"What's up with you, freak?" Chavez asked.

Zito twitched, still wouldn't look at him. "Put a shirt on, okay?"

Something turned over in Chavez's stomach, and he froze for a second, then mechanically pulled a T-shirt over his head. Zito exhaled, lifted his eyes and he looked really serious, like they were about to fight to the death or something. Chavez was scared in about six different ways.

"I, I wanted to tell you," Zito said. His voice sounded strange, uneven. "Um. I haven't told anybody else."

"What?"

Zito's gaze flitted away, a spooked bird, but then he visibly forced himself to look back at Chavez, his throat moving as he swallowed.

"Ah. Well. I'm gay, Ricky."

A bolt of pure terror flashed across Zito's face as soon as the words left his mouth, eyes bulging and face going momentarily slack. He trembled, went perfectly still, braced as if he were standing three feet from a rabid dog.

Chavez was motionless himself, for wholly different reasons. His chest was tight and his mouth dry and it felt like panic--he didn't know why he would be panicked right now. He was staring at Zito like he expected him to take it back, and Zito was staring at the floor again.

"I'm not," Chavez heard himself saying, and Zito flinched hard, a look of true pain capsizing his face. Chavez shook his head, wished with all his heart he could take that back. He asked fumblingly, sounding moronic, "I mean, are, are you sure?"

Zito nodded jerkily. He strummed, vibrated with tension, cutting fast glances at the open window, the shining day. He wanted to run, Chavez could tell. Chavez could sympathize.

"It's okay," Chavez said. "I mean. It's okay with me."

Zito nodded again, looking sorrowful, looking away. Chavez stepped towards him unconsciously. He wanted to put his hand on Zito's arm, but he thought that might confuse things. Chavez barely remembered kissing Zito behind the bushes all those months ago, a rough edge of heat and then gone, and he didn't want it to come back any clearer than that.

"Are you gonna tell your folks? And, Munce, are you gonna-"

"I don't know," Zito said, cutting him off. "Probably. I just, I wanted--I thought I should tell you first. I can't remember why."

Chavez opened his mouth but nothing came out. He just kinda looked at Zito helplessly, hands closed in fists at his sides. Zito's lips curled in a rueful ghost of a smile, and he shook his head, moved for the window.

"Anyway," Zito said, and climbed on top of Chavez's desk. He shoved his hair back out of his eyes, glanced down at Chavez and then quickly away. "I'll see ya."

"Wait," Chavez said without thinking, but Zito was hiking himself up and out, answering with a break in his voice:

"No,"

and then Chavez was watching him run away across the grass.

*

Zito never did get around to telling Munson.

It was all Chavez could think about for a couple of weeks, Zito being gay and going around with boys and what would people say about the three of them, what would they think? Munson kept getting frustrated with him because Chavez couldn't follow a basic conversation, too worried about letting something slip. It was a sick crawling sensation in his stomach, drilled so far down it was like a secret of his own.

But some time passed, and then they all made the All-Star team and played deep into the summer, traveling farther and farther afield. Chavez was caught up, forgot about Zito liking boys or Munson liking girls (more vocally every goddamn day), every bad thing that happened outside the lines. The game was more important just then.

Zito and Chavez learned to throw sliders. Munson cleared high school fences, three hundred and twenty feet down the line just like the big leagues. They were good, really really good and it was wonderful. Chavez believed it would be like this for the three of them forever, all the way up through the ranks of baseball.

They won the state title, lost at the West regional tournament. Zito ended up on national TV bawling his eyes out, which Chavez couldn't make fun of because he'd been doing the same thing except prudently into his glove.

The bus ride back home was better than twelve hours. Their families were following in a loose convoy of cars and trucks, dejected and pitifully still carrying slogans written in soap on the windows. Chavez and Munson slumped next to each other, playing their Game Boys and not talking to anybody else, all closed up together. Zito sat in the very back with Andy Ruiz, jackets over their laps and only pretending to be asleep, but Chavez was trying not to think about that.

It really hurt, not going the distance that year. Chavez hadn't known it could hurt that bad; childlike was a good word for what he'd been before, and he understood everything much better now. He thought uselessly that he wasn't really interested in growing up if it meant going through stuff like this.

The three of them met up in the middle of the night, the tail end of that summer when the winds picked up and the bushes started to turn the color of rust. They were tired and moody at home, snapping at their families, and none of them could sleep for the dull pain in their legs. Munson had put on two inches that summer; none of them was the same size he'd been when they'd met.

The unremarkable suburban neighborhood at two in the morning was almost perfectly silent as they climbed up their tree, the two-trunk tree that was Chavez's and Munson's oldest common landmark. They had met up there at five years old, swinging by their hands from adjacent branches with the sunlight all broken up through the leaves. Now there were three of them, and they mostly weren't talking. Chavez would always remember it very clearly for some reason, the small hours of that morning a couple weeks before the summer ended, couple weeks after he'd had his heart broken by baseball for the first time, up in that tree with Zito and Munson and the leaves and moonlight and nothing else.

Then life resumed. That is to say, school. Eighth grade was not noticeably different than seventh, except there was more often beer at the parties, or someone's older brother or sister had sold them a ten-dollar joint. It was awesome, a gleaming kindhearted haze and so cool, everything was getting so goddamn _cool_. It made Chavez feel like the best part of his life was finally starting.

They had a barbeque and bonfire on the beach for Munson's fourteenth birthday in October. The three of them were tight for the first couple of hours, moving as a unit and huddling around Gatorade bottles filled with whiskey and flat soda. Chavez kept his arm slung around Munson's shoulders, a magnetic pulse drawn to the surface of his skin.

Zito wandered off first, drifting over to watch the boys drunkenly skateboarding in the parking lot. Chavez and Munson sat too close to the fire roasting marshmallows jammed onto long wooden matches. Munce always cut right to the chase, as with most things, and made a guttering orange and purple torch of his 'mallow, blowing the flame out when it was good and charred. Munson liked how it got liquid soft on the inside. Chavez was more inclined to take his time, slow rotating with an eye towards golden-brown. It was a pursuit of perfection, which was what Chavez did best.

Munson was talking about the imminent baseball playoffs and how much he wanted the Pirates to kick the holy shit out of the Braves, and Chavez was in general agreement there.

"And I'll tell you what I couldn't physically care less about," Munson said, sticky-mouthed. "Twins-Blue Jays for the AL pennant? It's like the opposite of caring, how I feel about that match-up."

Chavez smirked, sideways eyeing Munson as he licked at the marshmallow goo on his fingers. Chavez's stomach felt weird, too much sugar maybe, and he looked away, into the fire.

"I think you're supposed to pull for the Americans," Chavez told him. "Like, the home team. Right?"

"Minnesota is kinda the same as Canada, though."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, whatever. Long as the Braves lose, I'm pretty happy with it."

Munson's matchstick caught fire without him noticing until the flame bit into his hand, and then he yelped, dropped everything and stuck his fingers in his mouth. Muffled, he cursed, "Fug!" and Chavez started to laugh. He choked on a half-chewed bit of marshmallow, coughed and teared up and now there were all kinds of things wrong with him, hands fisted in the sand.

Munson wasn't much help at all, trying to slap him on the back but Chavez squirmed away, not wanting hands on him just now. He hacked and spat into the fire and he could inhale now, a stinging glassy feeling in his lungs. His head felt split open, fused back together with the two halves not fitting right.

Chavez tipped his head back and located the moon. It was the fifth cardinal point, the other direction you could go. Chavez calmed down.

He glanced at Munson and Munce was grinning at him, peeling open a melting Hershey's. The firelight glinted off the silver-backed paper, incredibly faint reflections.

"You're hella drunk," Munson said, sounding really happy about it. "Here, you want some of this?"

Chavez accepted half of the chocolate bar, and it sagged between his fingers, barely still solid.

"'m not so bad," Chavez mumbled, licking chocolate off his hand. "Just new. It's new."

Munson lifted his eyebrows, nodded. He looked over to the parking lot and Chavez followed his gaze, saw Zito perched precariously on a skateboard, his hands gripped in the shirt of the older boy who was showing him how. Zito was smiling big, motor-mouthing at the kid who blinked back, bemused.

"Barry seems to be takin' to it," Munson remarked.

It tightened Chavez's skin, an unconscious scowl closing down his face. Zito never had a problem talking to people. He never worried that he was gonna get shot down. Chavez felt like being gay should frighten a person at least a little bit, some constant subterranean shudder because it wasn't supposed to be _easy_ , but Zito didn't seem to know that.

"He's takin' to that guy for sure," Chavez muttered, not really thinking about it.

"What?" Munson sounded hazy, half-laughing.

Chavez shook his head, off-balance and upset for some reason, his senses skewing around inside him. He was angry at Zito all of a sudden, for climbing in his window months ago and placing the word _gay_ to fester like an open wound between them. Chavez never used to think about this stuff.

"I wouldn't have made friends with him if I'd known he was gonna turn out a fag," Chavez said, and it felt horrible.

"Wait, are you serious?" Munson asked, his eyes big and muddy-looking, straining to understand. "Barry's gay, really?"

"He, he's just-" and Chavez couldn't think of how to say it, how to explain. It wasn't his problem, not really. He was just getting confused. "I don't know what the fuck he is."

"You-" but then Munson stopped, his mouth snapping shut so fast Chavez could hear his teeth click. He boggled at Chavez for a second, then shifted to gape incredulously at Zito and the skater boy. Chavez looked at the line of Munson's throat, the angle of his jaw, feeling riveted and helpless.

"Did he try something on you or what?" Munson asked eventually, sounding strange and dull. He wasn't looking at Chavez.

"No. No." Chavez's throat shrank down to a pinhole. "That would be really stupid of him."

"Yeah. Whatever."

Munson glanced at him, stormy drunk look on his face. Chavez swallowed, struggled to meet his gaze but he couldn't manage it, eyes darting to the fire once again. After a second, Munson blew out a breath, got unsteadily to his feet. He squinted down at Chavez, glaring in the dim light.

"You shouldn't have said that," Munson said.

"What--which part?" Chavez asked. Munson waved his hand, swaying.

"Any of it. You're a terrible friend."

It hit Chavez like an arrow to the chest. He exhaled, agonized, "Munce," and Munson's face screwed up.

"Not all the time," he said quietly. "Maybe just when you're drunk."

Chavez shook his head but he didn't say anything. He stared past Munson's shoulder, shame burning through him and leaving jagged edges. He thought that he should say sorry but he didn't really want to.

Munson pulled his shoulders up. "I'm gonna go find that Lizzie girl," he said, and then faked a smile. "Don't wait up."

Chavez bowed his head, and didn't answer. He'd ruined the whole goddamn night. He couldn't be trusted on his own.

Munson became an inconstant shadow among others on the far side of the fire, and Chavez stewed miserably by himself for a few minutes, his mood jet black.

Then Zito came back, stumbling and collapsing next to Chavez with a hectic look of excitement on his face, his hair blowing everywhere. There was a fresh scrape on the heel of his hand and all he wanted to talk about was the tattoo the high school boy had, inked around his hard upper arm and so cool and smooth and perfect, just perfect.

Chavez tried really hard to hate him. To his dismay, it didn't work at all.

*

So they were best friends, the three of them, and that worked pretty well for awhile.

They spent most of their time at the park, spent most of their time talking about where they were gonna go once they could drive. There was a string of weekends when they rode their bikes and camped out on the beach, until one night when a bunch of asshole surfers jumped them and got Zito's bag (with his _glove_ ) and the sixer of beer that had cost them fifteen dollars counting the courtesy fee for the homeless dude that bought it for them. After that, they relocated for the most part to the den in Zito's unattached garage. They were too tall to sleep all three on a foldout couch now, and so instead Chavez found himself waking up on the floor a lot. He didn't mind. Everything was going to get amazing in the next couple of years.

At school people talked to them like they were an indivisible single consciousness occupying three adjacent bodies. Nobody ever made plans with just one of them. Nobody was friends with one of them without being friends with the other two. Once a girl broke up with Munson (after five weeks, because he went to play baseball instead of going to the beach with her) by telling Chavez, "You guys are _so dumped_."

Chavez had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He was happy to have a bedrock like Munson and Zito, a default kind of friendship as constant as the sky, but sometimes Chavez wished he could just watch _Major League_ on his own without the two of them hollering along with all the best lines. Sometimes it was tough for him to breathe in Zito's garage, something in the carpet fibers probably.

But then baseball season was starting again and he forgot to care about it. In addition to playing for their own school's team, the Mount Carmel High School varsity coach let the three of them plus Tony Duncan practice with his team. Zito's dad somehow ferreted out Randy Jones's phone number and talked him into taking his son on for pitching lessons, and Zito showed up at the high school field throwing a ghostly knuckle-curve that Munson took monster swings at, almost dislocating his shoulders. Sometimes they lost track of time playing out their insomnia in the shadowy quiet of the park, didn't notice the sun rising until sweat broke out on the backs of their necks.

Eric Chavez was fourteen years and four months old, and one Sunday afternoon he and Munson and Zito were putting together a puzzle in the attic of Chavez's house, where the heat gathered and packed against the beams. They sat on the floor without shirts on, dust getting everywhere, a cardboard box filleted and flattened as a surface for the puzzle. Zito still had long hair back then, and it was stuck to his forehead and neck in shallow curls. Munson hadn't shaved all week and he kept scratching happily at his scruff.

"I'm working on that red boat thing now," Chavez reported, fingers spidering over the spread of upturned puzzle pieces. "So send those pieces over here."

"Roger roger," Zito said. "Where do you think the name jigsaw comes from?"

"Who cares?" Munson asked, scowling as he thumbed together a pair of side sections.

"Well, me for one. You can tell by how I asked, dumbass."

Munson punched Zito ineffectually on the arm, then sniffed loudly, swiping across his nose. Munson was kind of allergic to something up here, but he'd never complained. Munson wasn't really the complaining type.

"They probably cut the pieces with a jigsaw. A jigsaw saw, I mean, the tool," Chavez said.

"But dude, the puzzle predates the power tool, no?" Zito wondered earnestly.

"Who the hell knows?" Chavez answered, starting to side with Munson's opinion of the discussion. Zito was always getting distracted by minutiae, asking trivia questions with answers no sane person could possibly have on file.

Munson blew out an irritated breath. "The fourth corner piece does not fucking exist."

"The rats might have eaten it," Chavez said. Zito looked concerned.

"There are rats up here? The fuck! Nobody said that."

Chavez and Munson smirked at each other. They'd been maybe seven or eight and spending whole weeks at a time up in the attic, until Chavez's older brother rented _Willard_ and then hid rubber rats in their sleeping bags. There had been screeching and flailing and Chavez's brother howling with laughter in the hallway, and since then the rats in the attic had been a legend of their own invention, the villains responsible for every small crime.

"Yeah, they're really big," Munson said, showing Zito his innocent face. "Like, you ever seen swamp rats?"

"No way," Zito breathed out. His eyes were jittering around the room, digging into the dark corners. "Dude. Why are we hanging out up here?"

"Aw, they're all right," Chavez said, feeling weirdly protective of the giant rats that didn't even exist. "We used to feed them bits of cheese and peanut butter and stuff."

Zito's eyes were huge and betrayed, and he shoved his hair back with his hand, leaving a smear of dust on his forehead. "That is _gross_."

"Don't be a pussy," Munson told him with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Chavez found himself riveted, gaze stuck on Munson's happy teasing face. "Me and Ricky know how to catch them, and we'll put one on your face while you're sleeping. Then you can be grossed out."

" _Dude_ ," Zito said, horrified. "I would seriously throw up all over you."

Munson gave in, grinned big at Zito. Chavez's heart thudded, a disjointed off-rhythm. He flushed with nervousness suddenly, terribly confused and with a scratching hot feeling in his stomach almost exactly like anger.

"So freakin' easy," Munson said.

"What?" Zito demanded, looking over at Chavez like this was somehow all his fault.

Chavez swallowed, shaped his face into a shaky grin. He kept sneaking looks at Munson's bare shoulders and arms, eyes skidding against his will.

"He's screwing with you, Z," Chavez said. "And you're falling for it, because somehow you always fall for it."

"Hey," Zito said, vaguely wounded.

"It's okay," Chavez answered. "It's just how you are."

Munson was nodding, pleased, watching them both with an expression that was almost smug: my friends are fuckin' hilarious. "Like that time when I told you the new drug craze at the high school was snorting Tide powder detergent."

"Oh my god," Zito said, clapping his hands over his face. "You can quit bringing that up any freakin' day now, Munce."

"Not possible, too funny," Munson said, and gave Zito's shoulder a brotherly shake. "Really wouldn't have you any other way, buddy."

Zito rolled his eyes but he was kinda smiling, face turned down. He liked it when they had cause to wrestle or sling arms over shoulders or screw up a carefully gelled hairstyle right before they went into a school dance. Chavez had gotten enough cuffs and hugs from Zito's dad and mom to know where he got it from, which was good because otherwise he would have probably thought it was the gay thing.

That thought got him itching again. Chavez flicked a puzzle piece at Munson, said, "Let's go see if Howie's hanging around the bodega."

Zito concurred, straightening out of his slouch and perking up immediately. Munson sneezed and agreed. They pulled their shirts on, sweat-sticking at once, and clambered down the ladder one at a time.

Howie was the shady guy who bought them liquor and sometimes had schwag to sell too, sometimes misshapen little jays rolled in yellowing paper. They biked down in a tiny flying vee, wind blowing their hair back. Howie was sitting on his usual crate by the dumpster, swigging out of a brown paper bag and muttering at the sky.

Zito did the talking because Zito was the best for that kind of thing, an effortless kinda charm that worked on pretty much everyone. He said, "Jeez, Howie, you look like a million bucks, did you get a tan or something?" and Howie was smiling and confused with his head bumping up and down chicken-like. Zito chattered away, so friendly you just wanted to hang out and play board games with him all day long, and pretty soon Howie was shambling into the bodega with their money crumpled in his hand. Pretty soon he was coming out with two bottles of Night Train and a package of mini donuts that they shared out between the four of them, licking powdered sugar off their fingers.

Then Munson stashed their bottle in his backpack and they rode over to Zito's house so they could get drunk in the garage, where there were couches and soda and a TV and other getting-drunk necessities.

Really happy with how the day was shaping up, the three of them settled in, watching Looney Tunes on scratchy VHS tapes, passing the bottle back and forth. Zito was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, legs sprawled and his head rolling close to Chavez's knee. They couldn't find the clicker for the VCR (not that they really looked that hard), and so they made Zito crawl back and forth to fast forward through the lame cartoons. Zito didn't seem to mind.

Chavez got good and buzzed, tipping towards Munson. Munson had one hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, loose grip with his fingers bent and tapping fitfully, and Chavez was staring for some reason. Zito's hair brushed against his jeans and Chavez froze inside his clothes, just for a split second but it still threw him off. He felt like he'd been caught, like he'd walked around the corner smoking a jay and run directly into a cop.

Narrowly avoiding kneeing Zito in the head, Chavez got to his feet and slurred something about the bathroom, escaped into the yard with his head spinning. The sunlight was deepening in color as it set, thick and sticky-looking, stretching out long across the housetops. Chavez went in through the backdoor so he wouldn't run into one of Zito's parents, and shut himself away in the half-bathroom that hardly anybody ever used. There wasn't even soap next to the sink. Muggy orange light came in fractures through the beveled glass of the window.

Chavez ran his hand under the tap, working his fly open with the other. He swiped his damp forehead on the shoulder of his shirt, breathing through his teeth as his mind looped pictures of Zito and Munson sitting shirtless in the moted dust of the attic, their skin shining from the heat.

He pushed that stuff away. That was Zito's fault, that pestering awareness he'd implanted in Chavez's brain. Chavez got a hand on himself and it was girls, soft and curved and sculpted, shiny-lipped, sleepy-eyed, almost all girls except for Zito's face flashing randomly past, recalling the two seconds a million years ago when Chavez had kissed him, the first time he'd ever kissed anyone like it was supposed to mean something.

This was all Zito's goddamn fault. He must have done some infectious gay thing to trick Chavez into kissing him, and ever since, Chavez had jerked off with Zito there, surprise scrawled all over his face, the thin slats of his arms and his pale slanted shoulders. It was just because Zito didn't care who knew he was queer, didn't care how it might screw up other people.

Chavez didn't want to think about Zito. He was leaning hard on the wall, his eyes slitted open and fixed on the warped glass, the dying light all melted and ill-formed. It was dazzling. Chavez's hand was working fast inside his shorts, and he mouthed messily across his forearm braced against the wall, wet bite searing on his skin. He wasn't thinking about Zito.

All of a sudden, he was thinking about Munson instead.

Munson's hands holding a bat, sweeping his palm up the barrel, fingers curled around the knob. Munson pulling off his catcher's mask to show his dirty face, his mouth alone damp and clean, secreting glints of white teeth.

And Chavez thought, _no_ , and then, _no no no_ , because Eric Munson had once cut open both their palms with a shell. They shared blood; it wasn't allowed.

But Munson's hands were hard and rough, almost too rough scratching down Chavez's stomach, sliding under his belt. Munson was clumsy and overeager like he got when he was making out with girls, licking crazily at Chavez's mouth and cheek and throat. Chavez was gasping, terrified, his grip incredibly slick and hot and his hips jerking forward. Images crashed together in his mind, his best friend sucking a bruise at the edge of his hip, Munson grinning up at him and twisting his hand just like this, so tight Chavez felt like he was choking. Then he was canting forward over the toilet with his teeth dug into his lower lip to keep from crying out, finishing on a series of staggered moans.

Chavez slumped, his head rolling on the cool bathroom wall. He was breathing too fast, bolts of air punched out of him, and he could feel his heartbeat in his temples, the place where his wrist was flattened on the window sill. The endorphin rush raged against panicked adrenaline and Chavez thought he might throw up; he kept forgetting that he was drunk.

"No," he muttered to himself, and gathered a wad of toilet paper to clean himself up. His hands were trembling and stupid. "Not like that."

The little room yawed violently to the side. Chavez grabbed for the counter, bracing himself on his hands and staring at his own nose in the mirror.

"That wasn't your fault," Chavez told his reflection. A scared-looking kid blinked back at him, lower lip gnawed to hell and the color gone from his face. Not liking the sight of it, Chavez narrowed his eyes, hardened his jaw, scowled with true determination.

"You're not like that," Chavez said a little louder, and it echoed slightly. He sounded pretty convinced.

*

A few months later, right before school ended for the summer, Zito was pitching to Chavez at the park, Munson roaming the imagined outfield, drifting left and right depending on how Chavez's feet were set, how sharp the angle of his bat. Chavez had been getting taller all season, shoulders spreading out under his T-shirts, and every inch was another fifteen feet he could hit a baseball.

Zito threw mostly curveballs, because he loved to throw that pitch, loved it like breathing, and Chavez and Munson were both in general agreement that if they figured out how to hit Zito's curve, world domination would surely follow. Chavez was dizzy from trying to see the falling red stitches, trying to make Zito move in slow motion. He was short of breath, his back aching dull and good.

Behind Chavez the two-trunk tree caught the pitches he missed. Sometimes they rolled underfoot and he almost fell on his ass.

Then Zito was calling out, "All right, I'm gonna try some four-seams now, so don't dig in too close."

"Fuck you," Chavez said cheerfully. "That inside corner is _mine_ , bitch."

Predictably, Zito threw at Chavez's head, but he was already scooting backwards and taking a huge off-balanced swing, tomahawk-chopping into the ball. To Chavez's immense surprise, he connected, a jarring crack as a flare popped over Zito's head, and a big shard of the bat went whipping towards where first base would have been if they had a first base.

Zito squawked, covering his mouth with his glove and bugging his eyes in shock. "Dude! You could have killed me!"

"I don't have that kinda luck," Chavez said, then shouted, "Munce, did you see that?"

Munson came running in, and they gathered around the speared piece of bat, impaled in the grass. Chavez was grinning, really pleased with himself.

"You know how hard you have to swing to break a bat?" he said, nudging his elbow into Munson's side. Munson rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, and you know how bad you have to miss the pitch?"

"Dude, did you not see that pitch? I was about to take that motherfucker in the _teeth_."

"That was the intention," Zito agreed.

Chavez smiled joyfully at Munson, tossed an arm around his shoulders. "It was pretty cool, though, right?"

Munson shrugged, making no move to shake Chavez's arm off. The edge of his mouth was curling up, his poker face gradually destroyed.

"So you're gonna buy me a new bat, right?" Munson asked pointedly, and Chavez had totally forgot the bat was even Munson's to begin with.

"Oh, um. Sure. Naturally." Chavez rattled his fingers on Munson's shirt sleeve, eyebrows up. "I mean, I got a birthday coming up."

"Okay, that's not for six months."

"Whatever! I broke a bat, it was cool. Let's focus on that."

Munson gave in, a grin flashing across his face and making Chavez's skin heat, making him realize suddenly that they were very close to each other. He let his arm drop off Munson, swallowing and hoping it wasn't too obvious.

"It was okay," Munson finally allowed. "I've done it before."

"That was off a pitching machine," Zito threw in. "I don't think that counts."

"Who asked you, hippie?" Munson said. "Go get a haircut."

Zito pulled the bat shard out of the ground, shook it at Munson menacingly. "Watch yourself, Munson. I'll stake your vampire ass so quick."

Munson snickered, rocking to let his shoulder bump into Chavez's. He gave Chavez a conspiratorial look, half-rolled eyes, crimped mouth, wanting to get Chavez on his side but Chavez was already there. Chavez had never been anywhere else.

Chavez shifted his weight foot to foot, looking at the sprinklers spraying mist over the lawns across the street. "Let's go get your old aluminum bat," he said to Munson, but Munson shook his head.

"My mom gave it to Goodwill. I told her to put it in the keep pile, but she never listens to me."

Zito sighed. "You killed the game, Ricky."

Chavez pushed him, took the bat shard out of his hand. He still had the bat handle and he fit the pieces together, pressed so the seam was as thin as a hair. He thought about how he'd probably end up shattering a hundred bats, if his life took the course it was supposed to, and this was the first one.

When he got home that night, he stashed the two pieces under his bed with his Little League home run balls and shoeboxes full of baseball cards. He lay down on top of the messy covers and thought about how the bigger he got, the farther the ball went. Eric Chavez closed his eyes, trying to feel his body growing.

He dreamt of Eric Munson that night, dirty face, clean mouth. That was happening more and more often.

He woke up in a haze, sticky inside his shorts and groaning as if he were in pain, but that wasn't it. He didn't hurt, just felt _off_ in a specific sort of way, a dragging slog buried deep in his bones. Chavez fumbled through breakfast, all thumbs and bleary-eyed, and his little brother asked him if he was hungover right in front of their mom, for which Chavez would have to kick his ass later, once he got back on his game.

Biking to school, Chavez almost got hit by two different cars. He felt trailed by black clouds and kinda doomed, kept thinking how much better things had been when he was asleep.

Munson was sitting cross-legged on the low stone wall bearing the middle school's name, and he got to his feet when he caught sight of Chavez, stood ten feet tall with the kids' heads bobbing past his knees. Munson waved, hollered something Chavez couldn't make out but he didn't care. Chavez could hardly see through the sun in his eyes; he crashed into a bike rack and didn't care about that either.

Munson hopped off the sign and came over to him, jaw working on pink gum, blowing out bubbles now and then. His hands were flitting around the way they did when he got overexcited, though he was trying to kick that habit.

"There's asbestos in the cafeteria," Munson told him happily.

Chavez grinned at him, feeling dangerously slow, fifty points lopped off his IQ. "What?"

"Potentially toxic asbestos in the roof of the cafeteria!" Munson grabbed Chavez's shoulders and gave him a shake. "We all might die, but for today they cancelled class."

"No shit?" The day brightened even further, the sun's dimmer switch cranked up to eleven. "The whole school?"

"No, just you and me. Of course the whole school. They're doing an inspection, which, fat lot a good that'll do us after eating the stuff for three years, but whatever, we've survived this long. Let's go to the beach."

Munson let him go, a little triumphant shove as punctuation. Chavez felt unsteady, his body finally waking all the way up, rushing with energy and blood to his fingertips. It made him anxious, too much at once.

Kids were coming back out of the school as fast as they went in, the news spreading in excited hoots and open hands cracking against each other. A stocky boy with dark red hair was tossing his baseball cap in the air over and over, and a few other kids followed suit, the sky filling up. Everybody was smiling.

"Do we have to check in somewhere?" Chavez asked, dazed.

"Fuck it, nobody cares," Munson told him, and half-turned to scan the milling crowd in front of the main doors. "Barry went to get a Coke and then we were gonna go."

"'kay."

Looking back at him, Munson's eyes went thin, still wearing a spectacular grin like he'd found money or hit a walkoff, one of those random moments of total joy. There was this uncomfortable flipped sensation in Chavez's chest, everything turned upside down.

"What's up with you, by the way?" Munson asked. Chavez's eyebrows shot up, his brain freezing for a second.

"I, um, nothing. I'm kinda tired."

"Ah, not just right now. Although I don't know how you're not more excited, this is like the snow day we never had. But no, because you've been moody as hell for awhile now."

"Maybe I've got asbestos poisoning," Chavez said easily enough, even though his stomach was knotting.

Munson snorted. "Excellent. Sue the school."

"Done and done. Soon we will be millionaires," Chavez said in a grand tone, hoping no one noticed how neatly he'd sidestepped Munson's actual question. Sometimes Munson missed stuff like that, and Chavez knew how to distract him, get a little run of banter going and lead Munson carefully astray.

Zito called out as he came over, and Munson looked his direction but Chavez found himself staring at the side of Munson's face, the pulled-taut line of his neck, and that tight feeling in his stomach didn't go away. He didn't know why he kept getting so weird around Munce. It was those stupid dreams, that trick Zito had played that made him act gay sometimes, something. Chavez didn't let himself think about it too much.

They went to the beach. The colleges were already out and the water was astir with surfers and girls in two-pieces. Little kids constructed sand cities for the pleasure of kicking them over. Munson tore off his shirt and shoes and went whooping into the ocean, and Zito followed right behind. Chavez took a minute to gather their stuff in a messy pile and then added his own, his shirt draping across both of his friends'.

Munson and Zito were wrestling, trying to dunk each other as the sun glittered off the waves, their soaked bodies and hair. Chavez let them tackle him without resistance, drag him under and he opened his eyes to the salt burn for the briefest of seconds, just because he didn't want to see anything more today.

*

That summer, the summer before their freshman year, Chavez bused tables at his uncle's restaurant and Munson killed hours and hours at the arcade across the street, waiting for him to come out on his breaks. Chavez brought him tamales and taquitos because Munson was spending his allowance on epic games of Area 51. His parents thought he was volunteering at a local library, a story concocted to keep them from hounding him about getting a job.

Chavez developed a few Pavlovian tells: he came out of the restaurant and without thought his head turned and his eyes flicked to the big front windows of the arcade; he didn't get hungry until he and Munson were seated on the curb, knees knocking and hands lifted under the restaurant's colorful ceramic plates; every single time Munson smiled, Chavez smiled back.

If Chavez worked the day shift, they went to the high school field afterwards to take a few rounds of BP. They had a big canvas satchel full of baseballs and they rock-paper-scissored to see who would have to bike with it slung over his back all lopsided and heavy. There was nobody to field and everything took twice as long, but they worked through it.

Zito had gone to some fancy baseball camp for two months. It was somewhere on the other side of Los Angeles, which didn't seem so far but Zito didn't call so it might as well have been Mars. Early on, he'd sent a postcard to each of them, but just the one. In Chavez's he asked _how's Munce_ , and in Munson's he asked _how's Chavvy._

Chavez and Munson decided right away that they didn't miss him at all. There were long stretches of silence between the two of them sometimes, but they were comfortable with that.

Then one afternoon in August, the hottest day of the year so far, they went swimming at the reservoir, taking turns jumping off the rocks with their legs jackknifed or pulled into a cannonball. Munson was wearing a pair of black and white Hawaiian-patterned trunks that had once belonged to Chavez, and before that Chavez's older brother. It put odd thoughts into Chavez's head, seeing Munson wearing those.

They got tired of jumping and ended up floating on their backs, flat and limp as soaked leaves on the surface of the water. With his eyes closed, everything felt liquid, heat and sunlight and dull mossy smell, all of it.

Chavez's leg bumped Munson, sent him spiraling off in another direction.

"So when we're in the bigs," Munson said, no trace of doubt in it, "I think we should get a place that's like, home base. No matter which teams we're on, we should get a house on the beach, something like that, and all three of us can use it whenever, like we're playing close by or for the off-season or whatever. And we can meet up there and stuff. You know?"

Chavez nodded and it made him start to sink. He kicked softly for balance. "We'll be hella rich, we should get like five places. All over the country."

"Well, but the point is to have someplace where we could all still hang out occasionally, right? Which I think would happen less with five houses."

"Probably true," Chavez allowed. He wished he'd remembered his sunglasses, his eyelids feeling melted. "The hanging out is important."

"It's the key," Munson said, sounding sleepy. "It's why we're so good."

"What, because we're friends?"

"Partly. And we practice off each other all the time, like, honing skills and whatnot. I mean, you and me woulda been fine on our own, but what woulda happened to Barry without us to wake his ass up and drag him to the park?"

Chavez grinned. "He would be, like, constantly stoned."

"We're better because there's three of us," Munson said, plainly sure the way he got from time to time. "Good number, three."

"Yeah," Chavez answered, and wished he could see Munson's face. "My favorite, actually."

"I know, dude, obviously." Little splashing sound, big smile in Munson's voice. "I know everything about you, that's the other part of it."

Chavez floated through a cold patch, a hard shiver capsizing him briefly. His head dipped under and the water buried him, cut off his eyes and ears and mouth. He wasn't thinking straight, inhaled accidentally and then he was choking and sputtering, arching back up. His chest and throat were burning.

"Whoa," he could hear Munson saying. "Your face is turning a really interesting color."

Splashing weakly, Chavez hauled in a few damp breaths and settled down. Munson was swimming in place beside him, legs churning under the water and his arms stretching out. He was half smiling and half worried and Chavez wasn't sure what it said about him that Munson looked incredibly appealing like that. Chavez jerked his eyes away, his head whirling briefly with all the things that Munson didn't know about him.

It was an upsetting moment, more so because it had started out so well. That was the problem these days, everything Munson did was wonderful until Chavez got to thinking that it was _too_ fucking wonderful and then the world started to fall apart and this happened all the goddamn time.

Zito came back from the baseball camp by bus and Chavez went to meet him in the Ralph's parking lot where he was getting dropped off. Zito came stumbling down the steps, hesitant and off-balance with both hands hauling his big duffel. Chavez was so happy to see him he hugged Zito before Zito could get his hands free, a surprised oof as Chavez closed his arms around his back. Zito dropped the duffel, pushed him back by the shoulders, blushing fiercely and darting his eyes around, which Chavez found odd because Zito never cared what anybody else thought.

"Hiya, Eric," Zito said in a quiet voice, gaze fixed on Chavez's ear, and Chavez stirred, hot and kinda awkward, pulled away.

"Welcome back, fucker," Chavez said, not wanting to examine why he was so glad to see him. "How's the baseball academy? You some kind of stud now, or what?"

Zito shrugged, sneaking looks at Chavez through his eyelashes and rubbing at his own shoulder. "It was all right, it was, you know. Different but the same, that kinda thing. What. Where's Munce?"

"He went surfing with Steve and those guys, 'cause he doesn't really like you that much."

Zito took a swing at him and Chavez fell back out of range, all of it in rhythm. Chavez bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, studying how Zito's arms were tanned so dark his white T-shirt practically glowed.

They had fifteen days left before class started. Once they fell asleep in the park on a Monday night and the sprinklers woke them up. They ran yelping and covering their heads as if fleeing from bees, gathered on the street sodden and short of breath and blaming each other for everything. Then they walked back to Chavez's house, leaving three roughly parallel wet-shoe trails fading to nothing on the sidewalk.

They resettled on the couch and floor of the living room, Zito and Munson wearing dry clothes that belonged to Chavez and didn't fit right. Chavez liked the look of the two of them in his stuff; he couldn't really get it out of his head. He closed his eyes and he fell asleep and he dreamed and he kept seeing them, peeling his old shirts over their heads and leaving their hair spiky and wrecked.

He woke up with skin too tight and hands sore from being clenched in unconscious fists, and suddenly Chavez couldn't wait for school to begin.

*

The spring of their freshman year, Chavez and Munson and Zito all went out for the varsity team.

Zito wasn't his best at try-outs, which were at nine in the morning on a Saturday. He never woke up all the way, pitching in a haze and drilling curveballs into the ground, fastballs winging high into the backstop. Chavez couldn't help him, couldn't watch. He had enough to concentrate on himself, trying to catch up to the senior who threw mid-nineties, trying to field bullets fired from the pitching machine, trying to turn two.

Munson was in his element. He hit three dingers in his first ten swings and after the third he said to the coach evaluating him, "I can do that right-handed too, by the way."

It was a long morning. It kept getting hotter and hotter, and pretty much all the other guys there were bigger than Chavez, or taller at least. Everything moved much faster than it did in the park when it was just the three of them.

Afterwards they dragged themselves into the gym showers and then back into their street clothes. Out in front of the school they collapsed on the grass, resting up a second and debating wearily over what kind of food they should get for lunch.

Then Zito said, "I was not so good, just now."

Chavez and Munson fell silent, twin spurs of tension going through them. Zito was lying between them, staring up at the pale blue sky.

"I figured I'd do better than that," Zito continued, though Chavez wished he wouldn't. "I usually pitch better than that, right?"

"Yeah," Munson said at once.

"I mean, I strike you guys out all the time."

"Yeah," Munson said again, because that was true.

"Bad timing," Zito muttered, and Chavez wasn't sure Zito was really talking _to_ them so much as _near_ them. Zito was off inside his own head again. "Of all the days to lose the feel."

"You haven't lost it," Chavez said, kinda irritated with Zito for being a downer when they'd already had such a tough morning. "Just folded under the pressure a little bit."

Zito nodded, eyes tracking the slow-moving clouds. "Somewhat discouraging. All it is from now on is pressure."

There was a sick fog encroaching on Chavez's mind, and he was inclined to blame it on too much sun.

"You'll be all right," Munson said with his typical unforced confidence. Munson only ever saw the best in all of them.

"I better be," Zito said under his breath.

Chavez pushed up on one hand, swiped his forehead on his shoulder to get the worse of the sweat. He was shaking; they all were, to various degrees.

"Let's go," he said.

Munson sat up too, basically agreeable. "Taqueria?"

"Wherever. Let's just go. We're done here, why the fuck are we hanging around?"

Munson and Zito both gave him curious looks, eyebrows arched. Chavez tore out a small handful of grass, not wanting to talk about it.

Zito shrugged, got to his feet with shambling care, like a full-body collapse in reverse. He shook out his hands, rolled his shoulders gracefully, and Chavez was more than a little angry with him. Everything would be awesome right now if Zito had managed to pitch the way he obviously could. They'd all be really happy and excited, talking over each other and running around the parking lot like little boys playing airplane, and the brightness of the sun wouldn't bother them all.

But Zito had fucked it up. Four days later the team list went up on the door of the coach's office and they crowded into the hallway with all the other hopefuls, jostling shoulder to shoulder for a look.

Chavez and Munson made the varsity team, the only two freshman. Zito made the junior varsity team and it was like someone had stuck a knife in him.

Zito went around betrayed and mutely furious for a couple of weeks. He didn't stop talking to Chavez and Munson but he did stop talking first. He'd answer direct questions and reluctantly add to the conversation when they turned expectant eyes to him, but it was clearly a grave trial for him. Zito kept glaring like he hated them, like it was somehow their fault, and Chavez couldn't stand that, wanted to slap him all the time.

Chavez was fifteen years old now, hadn't yet gotten past second base with a girl (Munson had gotten his dick sucked for the first time over Christmas break and not spared a detail in recounting it, an experience that simultaneously thrilled and horrified Chavez, all of it for reasons he couldn't properly articulate), hadn't kissed any boy other than Zito.

He was weird, he knew he was weird. He didn't think about sex as much as other guys seemed to, because it embarrassed him still, the physical reality of it and all the stuff he was supposed to know how to do on the first try. So many things could go wrong. It would probably be awful and soul-destroying, and he would be naked the whole time.

So Chavez kept it closed off in the side of his mind, reserved exclusively for the nighttime when it was just him and his hands and whatever he wanted to think about, no second person necessary, or at least, no one so concrete. Chavez did have a wonderful imagination. And you couldn't be held responsible for the stuff that happened right before you fell asleep.

The rest of the time, he thought about baseball, and what it was going to be like in the major leagues, and the next prank in the never-ending war waged between the three of them. These were the other things that interested him more, and that wasn't normal at all.

But he played it off all right. He copied how Munson talked to girls and that usually worked pretty well. Sometimes the room was full of strangers and Chavez got mildly spooked, stuck to Zito's side because Zito's greatest gift aside from the curveball was his preternatural ability to strike up a conversation with every English-speaking human on the planet. Chavez had his strategies for dealing with stuff.

They were popular, the three of them, although they didn't really notice. Making the varsity team didn't hurt; suddenly upperclassmen were inviting them to go dirt biking and introducing them to a graphic design major at UCSD who made infallible fake IDs. Suddenly they knew about all the best parties.

Zito bitched about it for awhile, obviously still bitter about having to dominate the minor league for a season all by his lonesome. He said that the older guys were fuckers and drank shitty beer and only ever talked about their cars, any kind of bullshit he could think of to get Munson and Chavez to agree to just renting some movies instead.

But then Zito developed a remarkably transparent crush on a junior who introduced himself as Tim Hudson despite nobody ever calling him anything but Timmy. Hudson was on the small side but he looked carved out of wood, and he was if anything even more charming that Barry Zito. The two of them got drunk in a Jacuzzi one night in early March, had some epic hilarious conversation that Zito couldn't even remember, and after that he lit right the fuck up every time Hudson's name got mentioned.

It bugged Chavez. He wanted Zito to be cooler than he was, stop being so obvious about everything. Hudson had grown up mostly in the South and the stereotype indicated that he'd kick Zito's ass if he figured it out, and how could he _not_ figure it out? Every other word out of Zito's mouth was either "Timmy" or "awesome."

Chavez found himself wanting to slap Zito again. It was starting to seem almost necessary, for Zito's own goddamn well-being.

Instead they went to another party at some kid's family's beach house and Chavez set about getting drunk.

He had a plan. He was gonna get lit and find a girl and it'd be easier to talk to her then, let his mouth run on some of those funny stories that Munson told so well. Girls liked Munson a lot, and Chavez kept thinking about everything they had in common and how this should really be a part of it.

But he was too drunk to remember the punchlines, and he went looking for Munson to get a refresher. There were so many people, packed so close in the short hallways that he had to shuffle along, one arm stretched up and holding his drink above the fray. Everyone looked vaguely familiar, blurry faces from school and the bleachers at games, and Chavez kept getting confused, checking parts of the house he'd just been.

Eventually he stumbled out onto the deck, just as crowded but with fresh air and a nearby ocean to make it tolerable. The red plastic cup in his hand was empty now and so Chavez set it on the rail and went down the steps. He made it to the sand and realized with gauzy surprise that he wasn't wearing his flip-flops anymore.

Then he heard Zito somewhere to the left saying, "Fuck I'm wasted," and Chavez grinned reflexively, turned to face him.

But Zito wasn't talking to him. He was over by the side of the deck, in the shadows with Tim Hudson, who was patiently working a stubby mostly-smoked jay with the flame of a match folded out of the book. Zito had his hands cupped around Hudson's mouth to block the wind, his face in a manic grin that looked physically joyful.

Hudson said something about Zito needing to learn how to run with the big dogs, took a long sharp inhale before dropping his head back to exhale straight up into the sky, and Chavez watched how Zito was just staring at him, mouth open a little bit and his eyes enormous, helpless.

Chavez didn't want to see that kind of thing. It was _private_. He reeled away along the edge of the water until he was far enough he couldn't hear anything but bass from the party, and the houses behind him were deserted and unlit. He sat down hard, jarred every bone he had. The moon was huge, almost unrealistically so.

Chavez rested his head on his knees, breathed out. His reactions felt alien, faintly inhuman; nobody else was like this.

Some amount of time passed, and Chavez let his head fill up with the steady ocean noise, rush in and wash cleanly out. He didn't hear Zito coming because walking barefoot on sand didn't really sound like anything at all.

"Hey, Ricky," Zito said, and Chavez started, wrenched upright. His knees were folded and pulled to his chest, his arms wrapped around. He wondered if he looked pathetic, thinking that it wasn't like that; he was just drunk, that was all.

"What, what're you doin' over here?" Chavez was fumbling, half-unfolded and stuck.

"I came to ask what _you're_ doing way the hell over here."

Zito sat down next to him, fell back to lie on the sand with an explosive sigh. Chavez snuck looks out of the corner of his eye, the lean stretch of Zito's body and the blunted expression on his face, punch-drunk and happy.

"I wasn't doing anything," Chavez said, distant and unsure, really awful drunk. "I thought, weren't you hanging out with Timmy? Thought I saw you."

"Yeah." Zito smiled and shook his head, looked away. "That guy, that Dominic guy who doesn't like me, he made him go do a beer bong. He was supposed to be right back, but I guess he forgot. He was pretty fucked up."

"You would know."

"Yeah."

They were quiet but only for a moment. Chavez's mouth was running full seconds ahead of his brain, and he asked, "What do you do with them?"

Zito kinda froze, his eyebrows shooting up. "What?"

"Them." Chavez's hand waved uncertainly through the air, trying to swallow the clog in his throat. "Guys."

"Nothing. What?" Zito laughed a little, off-key. "What do you even mean?"

"You know, you totally know, dude, so don't. Don't try and pretend, just tell me. You can tell me."

Zito flashed him a big-eyed look that was like an echo of the way he looked at Tim Hudson, and Chavez skewed towards despair suddenly, thinking that he must sound crazy, stupid and crazy and drunk. He wanted to take it back but that would be even worse.

"Why do you care?" Zito asked him.

Chavez dug a hand into the soft sand, turning his fingers into claws, great retractable blades. "I don't. Not really."

"That, that can't be true. Look at you."

But Chavez didn't want to do that, and he shook his head tightly, face pinched in a scowl.

"Munson tells me things," he said.

"Yeah, but that's about girls, you like girls."

Chavez shrugged, biting the inside of his lip. "I guess."

Zito grabbed his knee, and Chavez started, his gaze snapping up. Zito looked surprised himself, like he hadn't meant to do that at all, and he blinked at Chavez, those fucking gigantic eyes of his. It couldn't be okay, what that did to Chavez on the inside.

"Um," Zito said, confusion crumpling his brow. He took his hand away with a weird little jerk. "I thought you didn't--I wasn't supposed to talk about that stuff?"

Chavez shrugged again. He was frustrated and crawling with anxiety, a hot thickening feeling in his stomach, and he never knew what he was supposed to say. He gnawed on his tongue instead, giving Zito short looks and catching Zito looking back.

"I don't do anything," Zito said eventually, in a hushed voice like they weren't a hundred yards from the nearest person. "I mean, making out and stuff, sometimes. I got half a handjob once."

"Half?"

Zito faked a grin. "His mom came home."

 _Who_ , filled Chavez's throat, and he jammed his face against his knees, smashing his mouth to keep the question in. He looked at his bare feet almost completely buried in the sand, and he wondered where his flip-flops were.

"It's really not very much," Zito said, sounding at once defensive and resigned. "Despite my best efforts."

Chavez didn't like the idea of that, Zito trying so hard to rustle up a boy to suck him off and how much longer before he got his ass kicked for it. Zito was careless with stuff like that; it never occurred to him that other people might react poorly.

"And you're still sure?" Chavez heard himself saying. "That. I mean. That you wanna be like that."

Zito laughed, a quick muffled sound hidden behind his hand. "I am like this. It's the only thing in the world that I am a hundred percent sure of, actually."

Chavez nodded dumbly, scraping his chin on his knee. He wasn't looking at Zito, instead watching the surf eating away at the sand like dark soaked satin, and Chavez was thinking, _that must be nice_.

*

The varsity team lost in the semifinals of the league tournament, and it was almost entirely bad luck.

There was a cloudless sky over the field they'd been playing on all week, the sun-fried grass punishing, flaying skin off elbows and knees. There were no fences in the outfield, it just stretched on six hundred feet to the distant parking lot with the cars glimmering like mirages.

Chavez was in to close out the game because the coach was saving his first string pitchers for the championship game. It was the bottom of the ninth and Mount Carmel had a one-run lead. Chavez was throwing the hell out of the ball, pitching angry because the other team kept catcalling at him, calling him shrimp and shortbus. He had to shut them up and he found that swinging strikeouts were pretty goddamn effective.

Then his shoelace came undone. He didn't notice. Munson was catching and he didn't notice either. There were two out and the batter took a huge cut, popped the ball straight up. Chavez darted for it, abruptly tripped over his loose shoelace and slammed into Munson with a hard crunching sound, and then they were lying in a messy pile on the ground. The runner ended up at second. Chavez had bruised the shit out of his knee against Munson's leg protector, and so he got pulled for a left-handed sophomore who was so nervous he stammered and shook, promptly gave up the game-winning home run.

It was more than a little disheartening. Chavez didn't want to talk to anybody for days, but then Munson showed up at his bedroom window and wouldn't go away until Chavez came out to play catch with him.

That summer Munson tried to teach Zito how to surf but Zito never got past the basics, ever distracted by all the older guys made perfect by the sunlight off the ocean. He started taking photographs instead, with the big clunky camera his folks had got him for his birthday in May, kneeling on the sand and catching the boys coming in, streaming wet. Chavez and Munson would ride with him to the one-hour photo shop, hang around out front of the nearby Circle-K until the roll was ready to be picked up. Zito took hundreds and hundreds of pictures, until Chavez felt like his whole life was going down on the record.

Chavez worked at his uncle's restaurant again and Munson half-assed looking for a job for a couple of weeks, and then ended up back at the arcade, hanging around on the sidewalk waiting for Chavez to be done. The three of them got together and moved in tight circuits between Zito's garage, Chavez's attic, Munson's backyard, the park, the field. They chased elementary schoolers out of the two-trunk tree and carved their names carefully into the high branches.

And then it was sophomore year.

Munson turned sixteen in October and was given his sister's old car to complement his brand-new driver's license. The three of them immediately took up driving around aimlessly in the classic American style. They were astonished by how much of their hometown was unfamiliar to them, how easy it was to get lost.

Then it was Chavez's turn for a birthday and they had the party at their friend Steve's place because his parents were out of town. Some of the upperclassmen from the team brought booze, including kegs, and inevitably it drew hundreds, vast generic crowds around the few faces he recognized. Most of them didn't even know it was somebody's birthday.

Chavez was separated from Zito and Munson for a period of time in the middle, when he went out to the keg for a re-up and came back to find an entirely different set of people where he'd left his friends. He wandered around trying to find a conversation to join and he didn't have much luck, standing at the outskirts of the circle, nodding along but never seeing a good place to speak up himself. And then he would feel awkward and wander away again. He kept drinking, because it was still his birthday for another seven minutes.

Then Munson shouted his name, the nickname that only family got to call him, and Chavez spun around to find him waving above the mash of kids, jumping up and down. Chavez grinned in pure relief, saw it echoed back as Munson began shouldering his way through the crowd.

Munson crashed into him, pinned him against the wall and punched his chest gleefully. Chavez went tense all over, a freakish thrill running through him. Munson didn't care, slinging an arm around his shoulders, knuckling at his head.

"You drunk yet? You having fun, man, 'cause this is kinda ridiculous."

Munson was shouting because everybody else was; it had become required. He was happy too, a mellow gleam under his skin that had Chavez's eyes riveted to him.

"'m doing all right," Chavez answered, leaning into him. "Where'd you go?"

"Nowhere, no place at all." Munson was grinning so big he almost looked deranged. "But there was a girl."

"Of course," Chavez said, intending for it to come out congratulatory and hearing snide instead. Munson didn't seem to catch it.

"Victoria," Munson said through his beaming smile. "Vicky."

"Ah. Of course."

"She's a junior and she's super-hot and she really likes the Pixies. I think, like." Munson swayed, his arm bearing down hard and Chavez felt half-smothered and wonderful for a second, plastered to Munson's side. "I think she's gonna let me fuck her, dude."

Chavez stilled, even though he hadn't been moving. Munson gave his shoulders an excited shake, grin egging at Chavez: c'mon isn't this great? But Chavez couldn't even fake it, brain overloaded with thoughts of some girl sliding Munson's hands up her legs while he stared reverently into her eyes. Chavez thought he might be sick, thinking that he'd give at least a couple of toes to be teleported outside right now.

"I mean, knock on wood," Munson continued, and let Chavez go to reach out and rap on a windowsill. Then Munson cracked his knuckles like he did when he got nervous, looking back over his shoulder and Chavez followed his gaze but couldn't pick anybody likely out of the crowd. He kept getting distracted, staring at the side of Munson's face, the faded scar in the dent of his temple where he had cracked his head off the metal corner of the fold-out bed, all those years ago.

"Anyway," Munson said, looking back at him but somehow not noticing the imminent-roadkill look on Chavez's face. "I feel bad, man, 'cause it's your birthday and everything, but you wouldn't mind if I took off with her, right? Because, like, she's so hot it kinda freaks me out a little bit. And I'd really like to fuck her." He grinned engagingly, tightened the band around Chavez's chest. "You understand, right?"

Munson was drunk. Chavez could smell it on him, see it in the wavering elated look on his face, his mouth blurring around every word. Munson was getting his priorities fucked up, forgetting that in the rock-paper-scissors game of life, best friend always beat girlfriend, just like wife beat best friend and girlfriend beat wife. They weren't that far along yet--right now it was just his birthday, and he wished Munson didn't want to leave.

"Yeah," Chavez said, a wrenching feeling in his stomach like his body viscerally rejecting the lie. "You fuckin' lucky motherfucker, of course."

He cuffed Munson's head because he was allowed to do that. Munson bobbed and wove and tossed his arm back around Chavez's shoulders, half-hugged him with happiness just radiating off him, making Chavez's head spin.

"You're the best. You're basically my favorite person on the planet. Tomorrow we're going to the diner and I'm buyin' you pancakes with candles. Hey!" Munson turned to the room as a whole, hollered, "I fuckin' love this guy!"

Chavez blushed so hot he started to sweat, thrilled and mortified at the same time, wishing he could turn invisible. Everyone looked over briefly and someone yelled fag but nobody else appeared to care. People said all kinds of shit when they were drunk.

After Munson left, Chavez went looking for Zito, feeling set upon and badly neglected, anonymous at his own birthday party. Zito wasn't at all hard to find, right near the keg when Chavez came into the backyard, instinctively bracing for the sharp drop in temperature. Zito was animatedly explaining something to a girl who looked bored and perfectly content at the same time. She nodded up at him, flicked her hair back. Zito was talking with his hands; it was the Italian in him.

Chavez loitered until Zito saw him and hauled him over, introduced the girl as Kelly and she said, "Um, Carly," and Zito didn't seem to hear that. He was smiling affectionately at Chavez, obviously ripped beyond the telling of it, canting slowly back and forth.

"It's his birthday, you know," Zito told the girl. Chavez smiled and shrugged, hoping to impart, _clearly beyond my control._

"Oh, happy birthday," she said, and raised her requisite red plastic cup to him.

"I got him a signed Tony Gwynn rookie card," Zito confided, still grinning at Chavez, not looking at the girl at all anymore. "You shoulda heard him yelp when he opened it."

"Okay," Chavez said, not up to faking it. "I gotta talk to you, man, come over here for a second. 'scuse us," he added to the girl, because his mom would have smacked him otherwise.

Zito allowed himself to be led over to the fence, where it was quieter, the wood soft to the touch from the damp overcast of the past few days. Zito had a hand clapped on Chavez's shoulder, a not-so-bright look on his face.

"Let's ditch this thing," Chavez said.

"What, no." Zito overacted with an appalled gape. "This is your birthday party, dude."

"Whatever, I'm over it." Disorienting carbonated feeling in Chavez's veins, tiny scraping bubbles in his blood. "I don't even know these people. And I. I'm pretty drunk. We could go back. Let's go back."

Zito existed momentarily in a pure state of confusion, a foggy grasping expression clearing the lines off his face, but he nodded, killed his beer in one long swallow.

"Whatever you want, it's your birthday."

They said goodbye to Steve and left unnoticed, trailed by the hailed farewells of no one. It was a hundred times quieter out front, spooky and still as they walked down the center of the deserted suburban streets. Two miles back to Zito's house and they hardly talked, a tense expectant silence building perilously high between them.

Chavez kept thinking about Munson with that girl who was gonna let him fuck her. Munson was growing up exactly right, everything happening to him right on schedule. Every parent's dream with his manners and impossibly sweet temper, and then add on how far he could hit a baseball, how he looked after sliding into home all panting and filthy head to toe, and Munson was pretty much everybody's dream. It made it fractionally easier for Chavez, to think that there were probably all kinds of people who thought about Munson the way he did.

The lights were off in Zito's house, and they snuck through the dark kitchen getting some snacks before retiring to the garage, walking on the sides of their feet like Indians and avoiding the floorboards that were known to creak.

Side by side on the couch, they watched the middle part of some late show movie about a lake monster. They had Kix and Cheetos and Chavez watched Zito licking orange dust off his fingers, the drunk solidifying in him like hardening metal, his arms and legs and brain all crippled by the weight.

"Sorry your birthday sucked, man," Zito said eventually.

"It was all right," Chavez answered, mostly by rote.

"We'll do better next year."

"Yeah."

Chavez tipped his head back on the couch, tried to imagine himself at seventeen, hoping to god his growth spurt will have kicked in by then. With his eyes closed his equilibrium dove, whipped in slow ellipses.

"You gotta let me know," Zito said in an absent mumble, almost like he thought Chavez was asleep. "Anything I can do, obviously I'm gonna do it. But I don't know, man, so you gotta tell me how to fix it. If fixing is still possible, stuff like that."

Rolling his head to the side, Chavez met Zito's eyes, smudgy and blurred-looking from Zito rubbing at them constantly in that stoned way of his. Zito looked rapt, eager and sincere offering up anything Chavez could think of, and a random series of nerve endings fired in Chavez, making his fingertips tingle, his lips and the back of his neck. He felt very unlike himself, and also scared.

He swayed towards Zito, planted a hand on his shoulder and pressed him down. "Just. Stay still, okay."

Zito nodded, making his mouth sealed and small. He blinked at Chavez like he was gagged, and Chavez couldn't take that look on Zito's face, put his hand up over Zito's eyes and Zito kinda gasped, but didn't move.

Chavez pushed up Zito's shirt with his other hand and got his fly undone, jeans peeled apart, and then he pressed the flat of his palm to the front of Zito's shorts. Zito sucked in a breath between his teeth, a swift high-pitched whistle as a tremor rattled briefly through his body, and then he was still again. His lips were parted and he was breathing heavily, already hardening up under Chavez's hand, twitches and heat, an unprecedented heat rising.

"Ricky," Zito said in a choked voice, a line of pleading in it, begging, _what the fuck?_

Chavez shook his head, pressed his face against Zito's throat, which was warm and smooth, shifting beautifully as Zito swallowed a few times. He smelled strongly of keg beer and the gel that he'd put in his hair, the artful shapes melting and softening all over. Chavez slipped his fingers into Zito's shorts, took hold of his dick and felt Zito's whole body jerk against his. Chavez opened his mouth on his shoulder, shocked because it was so easy, so slick and bizarrely familiar with his wrist twisting and his thumb rubbing hard, but it was doing crazy shuddering things to Zito. Zito's eyes were fluttering madly under Chavez's hand.

"Don't call me that right now," Chavez murmured, and licked at the edge of Zito's jaw. "Just let me, 'cause this fixes it, this is what I want."

And Zito moaned really loud, reaching blindly for Chavez and screwing a fist in his shirt. Zito's mouth was open, panting, and Chavez could stare without shame because Zito couldn't see him. Chavez could do anything he wanted; nobody was watching.

*

They pretended it hadn't happened for awhile. Or at least, Chavez did, because Chavez pretty much had to.

He'd left Zito asleep on the couch in the garage, and run home alone in the small hours of the morning, still very drunk but he didn't need his brain to get home; his body knew the way. Chavez was supposed to be out all night (birthday and all), so he snuck into his own house, climbed quiet as an assassin into the attic and passed out in a sleeping bag laid across the bare wood floor.

The next day, Zito called a few times but Chavez had his family say he was busy. His dad asked him if they were fighting and Chavez said, "Kinda," and declined to elaborate.

Then there was school and midterms and the holidays, every wall covered in tinsel and paper candles and fuzzy cotton snow. Chavez made sure never to find himself in the same room as Zito if there weren't also a ton of other people, or Munson. Zito showed him nothing but kicked-puppy eyes for a couple days, and then switched abruptly to pissed off, sneering and trying to trip Chavez in the middle of the school's quad where everyone would see. Chavez went around flinching and hugging the walls, trying to fade into the background so that Zito wouldn't hate him and Munson wouldn't find out and it'd all be fine.

Chavez had been drunk. People hooked up while drunk all the time--it didn't _mean_ anything.

Anyway, he couldn't look either of his best friends in the eye for maybe about a month. They were at the park every free moment, and Chavez let Munson take dozens of BP swings against Zito without demanding his turn. Chavez felt so much better all by himself in right center, shagging Munson's majestic four-hundred-foot fly balls. There was no thought to catching a fly ball, no real effort--it was so goddamn easy.

Zito was obsessing about the varsity try-outs that were swiftly approaching, and some of his anger at Chavez ebbed away. Zito needed him to pitch to, to see what was working, what got Chavez swinging off balance and dropping his shoulder, punching his bat into the empty air. It was only about baseball, so Chavez was okay with it.

If Munson noticed anything off between the two of them, he didn't say anything about it, pokerfaced and chill as ever. Chavez was pretty sure Munson hadn't caught on, knowing how Munson blind was to their faults. Anything unpalatable or less than endearing, all the various ways Chavez made a fool of himself on a daily basis, it was a tar-colored hole in the edge of Munson's awareness, maybe the one thing Chavez loved best about him.

One middle of the night, they played in the park until the moon was at its highest point, and then Munson said he was gonna go home because he had a economics test first period tomorrow. Zito answered, "Boo, hiss. C'mon, ten more pitches."

Chavez came in from where he was hanging out around where deep short would be if this were an actual field. He was yawning into his glove, and Munson pointed at him.

"Look at Ricky, asleep on his feet. And he's our ride. Time to go, Z."

Zito huffed, shoved at Chavez's shoulder and Chavez rocked hard to the side, stumbled. "Fuck. Don't push me, you fuck."

"I'm wakin' you up," Zito said, glaring at the tennis courts over Chavez's shoulder. Zito didn't look at Chavez directly anymore, which was at least fair. "You wanna keep playing, right?"

"No," Chavez said on another yawn, the word stretching out long and deep. "I wanna go to bed."

"You suck. Both of you guys suck."

"Quit whining," Chavez said, and they picked up the baseballs from among tree roots and thin grass, trudged to the car Chavez shared with his older brother, trading the same yawn back and forth and back again.

"Drop me off first," Munson said from the shotgun seat, and Chavez didn't even think about it, saying, "'kay," and taking the first left.

It wasn't until he pulled up and Munson opened the door, Zito getting out to take the shotgun seat, that Chavez realized the situation he'd put himself in.

"Munce," he said thoughtlessly, lurching forward.

Munson had one foot on the sidewalk and he turned back at the waist, hiked his eyebrows. "What?"

"Um," and Chavez didn't know what he could say. He was so tired, his mind faltering and flagging and reminding him that he wasn't really all that smart, and Chavez _hated_ that. He blinked at Munson, asking for something without knowing what it was.

Munson half-grinned. "Jesus, you need to get some sleep." He reached out, swiped his hand briskly across Chavez's head. "And you have grass in your hair. Night, man."

Munson got out and Zito got in. The hard crunch of the door closing made Chavez jolt like an electric shock.

He locked his hands on the wheel, rolled through the stop sign on the corner with his foot barely icing over the brake. He needed to get home. Drop Zito off and get home, get behind some doors he could lock.

Zito fucked it up, of course. Zito was always fucking stuff up.

"So, Ricky." He paused, timed it perfectly. "Oh, sorry, can I call you that now? It's only when you're jerking me off that I'm not supposed to, right?"

The wheel wrenched under Chavez's hands and he went up on the curb, came back down with a thump that echoed in his chest. He drove another half a block, gaze fixed rigidly forward because he could feel Zito's eyes on him furious and hot; he didn't even want to _imagine_ what Zito's face might look like just now.

"Listen," Chavez said, throat sand-dry and hoarse. "That, what happened. I think it, it's probably better if it, you know. Didn't happen. Hadn't happened. If we--I mean, it wasn't even anything, so there's no reason to, like. There's no reason we should worry about it."

Zito made a sound that was distantly related to a laugh. "Well, no reason for _me_ to worry about it, anyway. Seeing as how I'm already pretty comfortable with that kinda thing. How're you doing with it, Chav?"

Chavez shot him a glare, a quiet breath whistling out. "Hey, I have an idea. You be less of an asshole, and I don't kick you out of my car. Fair?"

"Fuck you," and Zito sounded actually _mad_ , voice rising and everything, and that was weird; Zito was usually pretty passive-aggressive and bitchy when he was ticked. "What's the matter with you? You don't screw around with your best friend and then totally freeze him out!"

"You're not even my best friend!" Chavez yelled back, and sweet christ, how he wished he could take it back.

Zito kinda shrank, hissed through his teeth. It was no different than a physical blow, really, and Chavez hadn't wanted to hit Zito for years and years; they had a truce.

"Motherfucker," Chavez said under his breath, plainly directed inwards. He knuckled at his forehead, grinding bone against bone. "That's not true."

"It's okay," Zito said immediately. He was staring straight forward now. "You and him, I, I know."

"No, that was a fucked-up thing to say. It's, there's three of us, that's why it works, that's, that's what Munce-"

He cut himself off, because Zito flinched at Munson's name and Chavez was struck dumb by that. Zito shook his head, scratching his fingers through his hair restlessly. Chavez only got glimpses of his profile, felt the strain and hurt pulsing out of Zito.

"Whatever," Zito said, toneless. "You're still handling this whole thing really badly. I just wanted to know how much more of that I could look forward to."

Chavez didn't say anything. He honestly didn't know, no idea whether this was just typical teenage destructiveness, or if he'd be like this forever. He sped through the silent streets, leaving an faint echoing roar being them, and Zito cracked his knuckles one by one. Chavez could feel Zito staring at him still, his nerves jittery from being watched.

In front of Zito's house, Chavez exhaled, unclenched one hand from the wheel.

"Night," he said in a cracking voice, and then fast, "Sorry, also I'm sorry."

He risked a look and Zito's face was open, clear as a book with his pained eyes and fallen mouth. Zito was folding his glove between his hands, kneading it, and he said, "Which thing are you apologizing for?"

"Uh. All?"

The slightest curl at the edge of Zito's lip, and he looked away, down the stretching line of palm trees, stretching and eerie in the dark.

"Okay," Zito said, sounding careful, almost brittle. "I'm gonna try something now, but you can't get mad. Because you're a total jerk and you owe me. So just, just let me do this one thing."

Chavez's heart bucked against his ribs and his muscles went taut but he didn't make a move to stop him. Zito wrapped one of his huge hands around the back of Chavez's head and pulled him in, kissed him hard on the mouth.

Somehow thirty seconds passed, and Chavez found himself dragged half onto Zito's lap, his knee between Zito's legs and both his hands sunk in Zito's hair. Zito was sucking on his tongue, holding Chavez to him with one arm around his waist.

"Holy _shit_ ," Chavez said, breaking the kiss with a huge gasp. He didn't move to get away; he felt stuck to Zito, melted to him. Zito was so hot his skin should have been glowing. "Barry, what-"

Zito licked under his jaw, nipped his ear and Chavez's voice gave out on a moan. Zito squeezed him tight around the ribs, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth scorching and wet on Chavez's cheek, and then he cursed heartbrokenly, pushed Chavez back into his seat.

Chavez was gasping, breathing in huge ragged sheaves of air, terribly aware of how he was half-hard and all he actually cared about at the moment was that. Zito looked at him sprawled and panting and disheveled, and his eyes seemed to go solid black, this ridiculously intent expression of desire on Zito's still-boyish face.

"Now you can worry about that too," Zito managed, and shouldered out of the car, staggering to the sidewalk and saying, "Good night, you son of a bitch. Sweet dreams."

And then he slammed the door shut. Chavez stayed out there in his idling car for five minutes after Zito had gone inside, just trying to calm down, fingers pressed under the shelf of his jaw to gauge his pulse. He felt drunk but that wasn't it.

This was something new.

*

The next morning Chavez left the house calling goodbye to his folks like he always did and then ducked back around the house and climbed stealthily in his bedroom window. Hair still wet from the shower, mouth tasting brightly of orange juice, Chavez took off his jeans and got back in bed, pulled the covers over his head. He listened to the sounds of his parents getting ready for work, his little brother and sister tromping up and down the hallway with the same boards creaking over and over. The door slammed once, twice, and the house was empty. Chavez fell back asleep.

He woke up to someone knocking on his window.

Chavez was sweating under the covers, T-shirt stuck to his shoulders tight as cellophane. He pushed his head up, saw Zito framed in the window, his fist touching the glass. Chavez shivered, a twist like a knife in his gut. He didn't want Zito here. He wasn't ready to think about it yet.

Zito widened his eyes and said, just loud enough, "Let us in, motherfucker," and then Chavez saw Munson lurking behind Zito, lifting his hand when Chavez caught his eye. A breath stuck in Chavez's lungs for half a second, a skipped beat.

He got up and leaned over his desk to slide the window open. Zito held his eyes for one terrifying nervy second, and then cut his gaze away over Chavez's shoulder.

"Fuckin' slacker," Zito said, voice tight but not too badly. "It's lunch already, are you comin' to school at all today?"

"Doubtful."

"Kinda useless, aren't you?"

Chavez glared at him, shaking on the inside and barely holding it together, but he wasn't going to get into it with Zito with Munson right there. He'd rather take a line drive in the face.

"What, I need your permission to cut class now?"

Zito shook his head, but didn't answer. He was pale, Chavez realized slowly. There were dark circles dug under his eyes.

"It's fine for now," Munson said into the empty space. "But they're not gonna let you play on the team if you're truant too much."

"I know that," Chavez said, a sharp edge to it. "Jesus, I just wanted a day off. Did you guys just come over to hassle me, or what the fuck."

He was looking at Munson but talking to Zito. Chavez's hand was clenched on the edge of the desk, just below their line of sight. His mind was clearing of its sluggish fog and flashes of the night before spun through, Zito's hand cradling his head, the suffocating feel of Zito's chest pressed against his, his leg between Chavez's, Chavez's knees spread wide.

Chavez bit the inside of his lip. His face felt pinker than neon, sweat itchy on his neck.

"Well, if you're gonna be a bitch about it," Munson said, no malice in his tone at all, and Chavez didn't know how he _did_ that.

Chavez glanced at Zito and happened to catch him staring, and Zito was chewing on his lower lip, eyes dark with frustration and whatever had been there last night. Chavez thought for the briefest moments about jerking Zito off on the couch in the garage, how he'd gasped and moaned like it hurt, and then Chavez shoved that violently aside, appalled.

"Look, I, I'll meet up with you later," he said quickly, honestly just trying to get rid of them now. "At the tree after school, all right? I'm just, I'm kinda tired is all. Maybe sick."

Munson's eyebrows went up, and he leaned in the open window, pointing a warning finger at Chavez. "Don't get sick. Practice starts in three days."

"I know, Munce." Chavez cleared his throat, kinda awkward. "So I'll see you, all right?"

"Yeah, once you get the fuck over yourself," Zito said on a sneer, and Chavez went still with shock.

His eyes snapped to Munson but Munson was only looking at Zito with mild surprise, and with his heart stuffed in his throat, Chavez said, "Fuck you, Barry, get outta my yard," and then swiftly, "Bye Munce," before slamming the window shut.

Zito pressed his fist to the glass again and Chavez snarled at him, feeling like a dog in a small cage. Munson stood there with an unsure look on his face, hesitantly half-waving at Chavez and moving towards the gate. Zito glowered at him for a second longer, his pretty mouth in a warped shape, and then Chavez turned his back. His shoulders hunched up instinctively as he crawled back into bed.

Chavez didn't meet up with them at the park. Hiding wasn't going to work forever, and he was definitely going to get the most of it while he could. Munson would infer something innocent from Chavez mentioning that he might have been sick, forgive him for it without thought. Zito would know better but if Chavez had any kind of luck at all, he'd keep his goddamn mouth shut.

He couldn't sleep that night, which was probably to be expected after the dreamless day he'd spent in bed. He slipped out his window and went walking through the neighborhood once everyone else had turned off their lights for the night. Behind wooden fences, dogs paced and muttered, yelped briefly before Chavez's rubber-soled footsteps receded to nothing.

And he thought, _I must be missing something_.

He kept randomly hooking up with Barry Zito, and the trouble was it didn't _fit_. Chavez didn't think this could be what being gay felt like, all sudden and catastrophic and attacking him at unguarded moments. He never wanted to touch Zito until he already was; it was so weird.

Chavez passed the end of Zito's block, three houses in and Chavez could see a light burning in the garage off to the side. Chavez thought about going over, silent through the crumpled grass and soft-knocking with the back of his hand. Zito would open the door and Chavez could say something really quick, _fuck it, i want to_ , and then Zito would take over. There would be walls for Zito to pin him against, and Chavez thought about what that might be like.

He didn't go over. He turned and walked backwards, watching the light and picturing the scene in living color.

Then there were the try-outs for the team, five solid hours worth of hanging around in the bleachers with Munson and the guys, watching the hopefuls run until exhaustion made their form sloppy and graceless. One guy rolled his ankle coming around second, sprawled on his belly with dirt cramming into his mouth. Another one broke his finger sliding into home. Then Tyler Jerran, a mite-sized senior who'd gone out every year and been summarily turned down, sprinted full-speed into the wall in left-center and was knocked out cold for almost five minutes, and then school nurse and one of the assistant coaches took him to the hospital to get checked out.

Everybody stepped it up after that, this spooky feeling of wearing the tiny red dot of a sniper's rifle. Guys were sacrificing their bodies, crying out in protest as they were carried off the field; this was baseball for zealots.

Zito stood half a head taller than any of the other pitchers except Cameron Lakdawala who was six foot seven and could throw high nineties with accuracy so poor it was potentially lethal. Zito was without question the best out there, and he kept himself from getting lost in distraction this time, face set in a concentrated scowl.

In the bleachers, Munson said, "He's gonna make the team."

"Yeah."

"Like, finally, right? All we were missing last year was a halfway decent left-handed pitcher. We woulda won the whole fuckin' show."

"Yeah," Chavez said again, appreciating Munson's fondness for revisionist histories.

They watched the try-outs for a few minutes more, and then Munson said casually, "That girl Caitlin with the eyebrow piercing has a crush on him, you know."

Chavez watched Zito throwing at targets in the chainlink bullpen. "Who?"

"Barry. She told Sarah Roth who told Jennifer Napolitano who told me. They want to know if I can fix Caitlin up with him."

A big desert fly came dive-bombing at Chavez's head and he swatted it away, antsy frustration crawling through him. "I don't think you should do that."

Munson scratched at his chin, plainly admiring his faint stubble. "Yeah, I was thinking maybe just for the comedic potential, but probably there's some downside I'm not seeing." He paused, eyes tracking over the perfect field. "He doesn't care, right? If people know he's gay, I mean."

"I don't know," Chavez said, which was a lie.

"I'm thinking not. It's pretty funny, dude, he hits on guys all the time and they only notice, like, a quarter of the time. You notice that?"

"No." Chavez had a baseball to squeeze between his hands, his skin feeling drum-tight. "I try not to pay attention when he gets like that."

Munson started to say something, and then stopped, looked over at Chavez with his eyes narrowed against the sun and seeming suspicious. Chavez panicked unobtrusively, thinking he'd said something stupid without realizing it, tipped his whole hand for Munson to see.

"Are you, like, do you have a problem with it or something?" Munson asked him.

The honest answer to that was _yes_ , but not for the reasons Munson would assume, so Chavez couldn't say it. He shrugged instead, mouth feeling full of static.

"I don't, I just wish he was--he's so obvious all the time."

Munson's eyebrows went up. "You said you didn't notice."

"Oh, um. Yeah, I mean sometimes. Sometimes even I can tell, you know?"

This wasn't going well. Words twisted up, died in weak spasms. Munson was giving him the strangest look, all hunched brow and searching eyes, trying to figure out why Chavez was being so weird.

"Cut him some slack, man," Munson said. "Because, really. He's not actually doing anything wrong, you know? Not hurting anybody. It's just other people might have a problem with it, and we say fuck 'em. Right?"

Chavez's head nodded automatically, wired for the eternal call-and-response nature of their friendship, but there was a disquieting feeling soaking him from the inside out. Munson was talking like they were on the same side, no surprise because they always had been, but there were different definitions now. Zito was one thing and Munson was something else and Chavez was caught torturously in the middle, and Munson shouldn't talk like he knew what it was like on the wrong side of the line. He shouldn't talk like he didn't even _care_ about the line.

That night they took Zito out and got him drunk even though it was only Thursday. It was a celebration, a victory march. Zito knew he'd killed the try-outs and he was taken with a rush of overdone bravado, crowing and pounding on his chest. Face flushed all to hell and gone, Zito said, "This is going to be the best season of our lives," and none of them even knocked on wood.

At the end of the night they were sitting in the alley between Zito's garage and the fence, smoking the skinny little jay Munson had gotten from the punky junior girl he hooked up with sometimes. Smoke itched and bellowed in Chavez's lungs, a raw-wool fuzz jamming his signals. His legs felt very long stretched out in front of him, his head very heavy tipped back on the scratchy stucco side of the garage.

"This is good stuff," Zito remarked dimly. He was squinting at the joint like it was a precious artifact of some kind. "Did she say what kind it is, Munce?"

Chavez snorted. "Like you'd know if he told you."

"I know stuff," Zito said, unperturbed.

"'s from Humboldt County, that's all I heard," Munson said. He had his legs folded and his arms piled on his knee, head turned to the side and nestled comfortably. Looking at him made Chavez really sleepy.

"It just makes everything nicer," Zito said like he was describing a universal truth. "I'm really having a very good time, you guys."

Munson laughed, said something about Zito being a total proto-pothead and then he and Zito started bouncing nonsense sounds back and forth, proto-pot-o-port, sniggering against the heels of their hands. Chavez sucked his cheeks hollow on the roach but it was gone, a dying spark that he could crush between his thumb and forefinger. His chest hurt, this deep reverberating ache.

They sat in companionable silence for a minute, eyes on the waxing moon, and then Munson said, "You got any good munchies, man?"

Zito said there were fudgsicles and fruit-by-the-foots in the kitchen and Munson made pleased noises, hauled himself to his feet using Chavez's shoulder. Munson said, "Ah'll be back," like the Terminator, and then stumbled off, one hand on the garage to keep steady.

Chavez glanced at Zito, felt his heartrate kick up, a buzz clouding his mind. Zito was gazing happily at the sky, his face soft-looking in the dim mix of moon and streetlight. Chavez thought about how much he wished he didn't have to feel like this anymore, and then he heard Munson in his head, _we say fuck 'em, right?_ and Chavez said, "Hey," to make Zito turn.

Chavez leaned over, licked at Zito's lower lip and then pressed their mouths together. Zito made a shocked half-moan sound and swiped his tongue in, one hand cradled around Chavez's jaw. Chavez was hypersensitive, already so turned on he was dizzy, clumsy, thick-fingered grasping Zito's shirt. It was so much better than any girl so far, and Chavez didn't want to think about what that might mean; he didn't want to stop.

But then he thought, _Munce_ , and he jerked away from Zito like he'd been shot, fingers clutching spastically and ragged breaths filling the space between them. Chavez reeled, his head a wreck and his body's internal temperature ratcheted so high it felt like his skin should steam.

Zito was gaping at him, his mouth wet now and impossibly distracting, and he said in a rusty voice, "You can't keep doing that, Chavvy."

Chavez's hand twisted hard in Zito's shirt. "No, I can. I'm gonna. We're, we're gonna, so you can just shut up. Shut up, okay? and then he nipped Zito's lip, tasted the place where his jaw met his throat, and fell back against the garage.

Zito was very still, staring like a statue. "Are you serious?" he asked in disbelief.

"Shut up," Chavez said again, almost begging, and then, "Yes. But shut up."

And by some miracle Zito did, just in time for Munson to come back with a long rainbow-colored strand of fruit roll-up hanging out of his mouth. Chavez locked his eyes on Munson helplessly, too scared to look at Zito and Chavez didn't know if that was how he was supposed to feel. He didn't know what he was doing at all.

Munson tossed him a fudgsicle still in its wrapper, his ill-shaped stoner grin beaming brighter than the sky, and Chavez decided that he couldn't deal with it anymore tonight. Zito could glare all he wanted; Chavez was done.

That lasted up until Munson went in to take a leak an hour or so later, when Zito pinned Chavez to the wooden fence and kissed him until the boards rattled. Chavez tore away for a breath and his skull cracked against the fence, stars and a deafening silver chime and Zito's face blurring in and out of focus, all smiles and worry and something going so badly astray inside Chavez, suddenly miles away from the path he'd meant to take.

*

Zito made the varsity team like he was supposed to, and the night after their first practice he sucked Chavez off in the men's room at the diner. Munson was finishing both their half-eaten plates of fries, flirting with the waitress and not noticing how long they were gone.

Chavez had Zito's head held in his hands, and Zito was figuring it out, learning how it worked right here on his knees on the semi-clean tile. Chavez couldn't watch it happening, breath hammering double-time and ragged as fuck, hips pressing forward instinctively, in where it was wet and deep and blazing hot. Once Chavez looked down and Zito's eyes were closed, his mouth so slick, so happy he was almost serene. It was exactly like Zito had always said; this was how he was meant to be.

After, Zito slid up Chavez's body with his hands climbing ahead of him, latching onto ribs and shoulders like tree branches. Zito kissed him and Chavez was so stunned and loose that he kissed back without thought, licked the mysterious taste out of Zito's mouth even though it was dirty, just filthy. He breathed out, "Ew," as Zito let him up for air, and Zito grinned at him, same knucklehead grin he'd always had as he nudged his knee between Chavez's leg, fitting their bodies together. Chavez could feel Zito hard against his hip, grinding carefully against him, like if he did it slow and smooth enough Chavez wouldn't even notice, but there was really no hope of that.

And Zito said, voice tight and rough with arousal, "Congratulate me, man."

Chavez wound his hand in Zito's hair, tugged his head back. "Already did that."

"Yeah, tell me again, c'mon, please," and Zito grabbed Chavez's free hand and shoved it into his own pants, molding his fingers and showing him how he wanted it.

Chavez gasped against Zito's face, stroking him off in a sloppy rhythm, dropping notes all over the place because it was so hot, even right after getting off it was still so _good_.

"Congratulations," he managed, and kissed Zito again, mumbled into his mouth, "Welcome to the team."

It wasn't a hundred percent clear to Chavez what he was doing. Around his family, his brothers and sister arguing over the remote and parents venting about work to each other in the kitchen, it didn't seem possible that he could also be a guy who had gotten a blowjob in the men's room at the diner where they used to go for brunch after church. These two things couldn't co-exist in the same guy, and Chavez felt like a serial killer or something, maintaining a black double life where all his wickedness came out at night.

Zito passed him notes in Geometry, poorly-drawn comics of the three of them on grand adventures, planting flags on mountaintops and dangling from helicopters and such. He started getting Chavez a Coke from the machine every time he got one for himself, picking pink Starbursts out of the pack because those were Chavez's favorite. Zito smiled a lot, and it looked to be mostly from nerves, but it was still a smile.

Chavez thought that maybe he was just getting over it, whatever perverse curiosity it was that Zito's being gay had brought out in him. That thing about gay being a phase was a total cliché and everybody knew clichés were true like half the time--Chavez really did want to believe that it would pass.

But Zito tossed his arm around Chavez's shoulders in the scurrying big-city feel of the quad between classes, and said to him in a confidential tone, "Meet me in the park tonight, okay? How's midnight sound?"

It was strange to Chavez because he didn't hesitate, didn't even _want_ to hesitate, no time to think. He answered, "Yes. I mean, good. Sounds good." And then for no apparent reason he said again, "Yes."

In the park at midnight Zito pressed him up against the two-trunk tree around which they'd based their entire lives, and Zito ducked to kiss him, his head blocking out the moon and making everything go wonderfully dark. Chavez gave up at once, shut down his brain and conscience and refused to find it weird that he had basically grown up in this park, stashed away in the branches of this particular tree, and look at him now.

It kept coming at him from the most unexpected angles. Chavez was twitchy all the time and he took to fiddling with his keys, chewing on pen caps, trying to make a quarter walk across his knuckles. He couldn't just sit still, never calmed all the way down. He fucked around with Zito and then he ventured back out on his tightrope, waiting with fatalistic anticipation for the next time he'd fuck around with Zito.

Munson, at least, didn't know anything about it. It was the single saving grace.

The baseball season started, and Chavez hit two home runs in the first game of the year. The second went farther than the first, rising so beautifully against the sky that Chavez honestly forgot to run for staring at it, and the catcher had to shove him up the line, cursing him out behind the mask.

The guys were waiting for him, crammed into the front of the dugout with their fingers hooked in the chainlink, whooping and rattling the cage like they were rabid, and Chavez dove right into the thick of them, let himself get swallowed up. Munson hugged him three separate times, pulled the helmet off his head so he could scrub a hand through Chavez's hair, kiss him extravagantly on the temple. Chavez was grinning dopily and gazing at Munson without a thought in his mind, and he didn't even really notice Zito on the other side, his hand wrapped up in Chavez's shirt and that same kinda pure and empty expression on his face.

Zito went down on him in the gym showers after that game, after the rest of the team was gone. The whole room was filled with steam, and they were bare-ass naked and blushing all over, both of them freaked out and turned on as fuck, breathing too fast and shallow in the heavy air. Water ran into Chavez's eyes as he stared down at the long slope of Zito's back, the frictionless roll of his soaked head as he twisted his mouth around Chavez's dick. Zito's eyes were closed, gone off to his happy place again, and when Chavez tried to clench a hand in his hair, his fingers slid right through.

It wasn't right, Chavez thought as he got dressed with his back to Zito in the quiet locker room. His hands were trembling and he couldn't get his fly zipped for the longest time. He was still blushing, skin still slick and overhot, and he couldn't look at Zito as they walked out to the sunstroked parking lot together.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. His sexual history wasn't supposed to start with his best friend (and he was, they _were_ , Chavez was fucking sure of it). Zito was his first for everything so far and Chavez wasn't interested in dealing with what that might mean. He didn't want to see the big picture, didn't want to think that this was the kind of man he was turning into, just as frightened and fucked up as the boy.

Munson was hanging on the fence surrounding the outdoor swimming pool, watching the girls' water polo team practice. Chavez moved for him automatically, but Zito grabbed his arm, pulled him up short.

"Hey, are you okay?" Zito asked.

Chavez didn't look at him. "Yeah, just hungry. Lemme get Munce and we'll go."

"Ricky-" Zito started to say, and he probably wouldn't have noticed Chavez's flinch if he hadn't had a hand on his arm. Zito's teeth clicked audibly as he shut his mouth fast and let Chavez go.

"I'm okay," Chavez said, a faint trill of hysteria running just underneath and he hoped to god Zito didn't catch it. "I'm not--whatever you think I am."

There was a pause shoved awkwardly between them, and then Zito said guardedly, "I don't think you're anything."

Chavez shot a look at him, biting the inside of his cheek. Zito was watching him with a wary expression, visibly holding himself at the ready. Zito's hands were in his pockets, balled up and lumping his jeans. Chavez didn't think Zito knew what they were doing here either, and some desperate part of him longed to cry do-over, turn the world back to the more reasonable place it had been before.

Instead he said, "Let's maybe not talk about it so much. Just. Go with it, okay?"

He walked away without giving Zito a chance to answer. Heart pounding, Chavez went to stand next to Munson at the fence, his shoulders and neck locked to keep him from looking back.

Munson said, "The fuck took you guys so long?" but it was idle, his eyes and mind full of girls in matching red swim suits, the exact same color as the letters and trim on their baseball uniforms.

"Nothing," Chavez answered, his throat feeling sore and raw. "Let's go get something to eat, yeah?"

"Down with that," Munson agreed, prying his gaze off the water polo girls and blinking at Chavez kinda hazily. Then Munson smiled, a simple smile like he was just glad to see him, and Chavez's stomach flipped over, a hollow keen slicing silently through him.

Chavez turned, half-expecting Zito to be gone, stormed off because Chavez was an asshole who couldn't figure out what he was supposed to _do_ , but there Zito was, right where Chavez had left him with his hands still buried in his pockets, his eyes on the two of them standing together at the fence.

*

They practiced three afternoons a week and a half-day on Saturdays. Friday afternoons, and sometimes Wednesdays, they had games, riding all over San Diego and the Southland in their big silver-sided charter bus. It was dust-dry everywhere they went, the sky a great pane of blue glass laid overtop their terrarium. Sometimes the air was so still it felt like a properly-hit baseball would travel for miles.

Their team was very good. Munson caught and played some third base, and Chavez went wherever they told him to, shortstop, second base, the mound. He'd started throwing a swanning dream of a curve, spinning down and down and down and he didn't recognize it at first until Zito said, "Rubbing off on you, aren't I?"

Chavez hadn't meant to do that, steal the pitch that was Zito's only real hope of getting a good draft (not that they ever talked about that), but it wasn't like he was going to stop throwing it now that he could. Batters actually lost their footing taking mammoth swings at it, plunged hard to one knee with their faces wide in disbelief and pain. Chavez couldn't be expected to give that up.

His legs hurt all the time but he didn't care because he'd put on an inch and a half since Christmas and there was more coming, he could feel it. Chavez had stalled out growing at fourteen, been vaguely fearful for the past couple years that that was it, he was done and he was gonna be really short forever and they'd never let him play in the bigs like this, but God apparently still liked him some. He hit home runs all the time now, home runs and balls hit too hard to go, screaming liners that hit the wall without a bounce and left dents in the plywood. He started hitting right-handed sometimes just so it'd be more of a challenge.

Munson was fucking a girl who played soccer for St. Catherine's and lived on the other side of the hills, and most nights he cut out early to make the drive and see her, stumbling in to school the next morning wrecked on sex and no sleep and smiling dozily at everybody.

She came to their games and sometimes Munson brought her to the diner with them afterwards, even though it made Chavez monosyllabic and half-sullen. He didn't know what it was, because she was fine, unremarkable; girls were all the same. But he could never think of anything to say to her, didn't like to look at her sitting under Munson's arm like she belonged there or something.

Rarer and rarer were the occasions when Chavez had Munson all to himself. There was always an audience. Everything was happening under a microscope, scouts in the stands just like last year but last year they weren't talking about Chavez's hands and Munson's swing.

Chavez couldn't do anything about it, couldn't tell Munson to stop getting laid so far away from home, couldn't make the cameras and radar guns go away. High school was lesson after lesson in everything that was not under his control, but Chavez was trying not to let that get to him.

Someone keyed his car in the school parking lot, which put him into a funk that lasted four days, four straight days swinging under pitches and chipping weak foul pop-ups, his back gripped and wrung like a wet towel and it _hurt_ , in addition to being endlessly frustrating and embarrassing as hell, it physically pained him in a dull pulverizing way that Chavez felt every second of every day. He even dreamed about it.

In the back row of third period English, Chavez slumped acutely to the side, propped on his elbow and complaining to Munson under his breath about how little sleep he'd gotten and how poorly he'd been hitting the ball and how very uncomfortable these fuckin' chairs were, but Munson wasn't interested in indulging him, told him shortly, "Quit whining."

Chavez sat back, stung. Munson was clenching his back teeth, scowling down at his returned essay with the teacher's red marks scribbled all over it like the page had been witness to a bloody fight of some kind. Chavez rubbed at his shoulder, screwed his knuckle hard into the stiff muscle, his tongue caught between his teeth.

"Just a little sympathy, Munce, 's all I ask," Chavez said, and it would have been completely regular-sounding except he had to speak so low it was more like a plea and that wasn't how Chavez meant it.

Munson darted a look at him and Chavez tried to make his eyes big and honest, pitiful but not pathetic, something along those lines.

"You got Barry for that," Munson said.

Chavez blinked. He was at a standstill for a moment, so entirely frozen it seemed like he should be _cold_ , but then he thought _calm down_ with a specific half-laughing inflection, and he breathed out a couple of times, got his mind running in a linear direction again.

Chavez leaned towards Munson, formed a smirk on his face. "But you're better at it, dude. Chicken soup for the teenage ballplayer's soul is what you are."

It was supposed to make Munson smile--it seemed almost guaranteed to--but Munson didn't even look at him, staring at the teacher as if waiting for her to start performing tricks. The face Chavez had put on faltered, fell.

Turning to the front of the room, Chavez swallowed, eyes blinking very fast for a few seconds before he got that under control. The teacher was saying something about what it meant when the nature of light was used as a theme, and Chavez's brain hurt just listening to it. He curled his arm on the desk, laid his head down with his hand ostensibly taking notes but really just drawing nets and spiderwebs and patches of intricate asymmetrical latticework.

Munson didn't know anything about what was going on within this three yard radius of theirs, and Chavez was pretty certain of that. Munson had stumbled near to it once or twice, but he didn't even know what to look for, what he was looking _at_. The air felt so charged any time the three of them were in the same place, but that was probably just Chavez. He was the only one who knew what it meant when Munson made him laugh and Zito looked away.

The thing with Zito was getting worse daily, like a wound becoming infected in minute increments. Chavez got sucked off all over town, six stories and the wooden changing huts at the beach and the back row of the second-run movie theatre out by the naval base. They took the car Chavez shared with his older brother and rode into the hills because it was like another planet up there, a forest moon.

One Friday night after a long day of school and baseball and swimming in the reservoir, Zito stayed over at Chavez's house and they didn't sleep on the fold-out couch like usual, went to his room instead and toweled the crack of the door. They smoked a jay hanging out the window, piled blankets on the carpet because there was barely enough room for just Chavez in the twin bed.

That night, Zito took his mouth away and slid up Chavez's body, brushed their mouths together so Chavez would lunge and stroke his tongue deep, seeking after that taste. Zito pulled back, panting and grinning.

"Try it, you should try it," Zito said breathlessly against Chavez's cheek. He was jerking Chavez off and Chavez was trying to return the favor but he couldn't get a rhythm or keep a steady grip because Zito's legs were tangled with his own and Chavez was so impossibly distracted.

He shook his head, fighting for air. "No, don't wanna."

"Come on, you totally do." Zito pressed flush against Chavez, mouthing down his face to jaw, his throat. "It's so fuckin' hot, man, you gotta try it."

Zito was moaning a bit just talking about it, rubbing against Chavez with these short thrusts of his hips. Chavez was hanging on to him for dear life, body flashing hot and his head full of pictures of Zito thumbing his lips apart, Zito telling him, _open your mouth_.

"No," Chavez mumbled again, and kissed Zito for a very long time. Zito had to understand, Chavez wasn't like him. They weren't doing this for the same reasons.

They broke apart, both gasping and their hands starting to claw. Chavez whipped his head to the side, carpet rough on his cheek and he could see the shoeboxes of baseball cards and Tootsie Pop wrappers under his bed, the smudged-chalk shapes of his Little League home run balls. Chavez's head reeled, still very disoriented by how different his life was from what he'd been expecting.

Zito nudged Chavez's face with his own, hot breath and his teeth bared for a split second. "Coward." Zito said.

Chavez didn't even blink, nodding and pushing both his hands into Zito's shorts to make it up to him. He didn't realize until much later that Zito had meant that as a dig. Chavez heard it as a simple recitation of fact, nothing more.

But the next day Zito was pissed off, wouldn't talk to Chavez at practice in the morning or afterwards when they went to Munson's house to make sandwiches. It put Chavez on edge, staring at the stiff side of Zito's face and attaching himself to Munson in self-defense. Munson relayed the conversation back and forth between them, and if he noticed anything amiss, he didn't mention it, because Munson was naturally kind like that, never wanted anyone to feel bad or awkward. Munson wouldn't mind at all if Chavez sucked Zito off, and it was weird that that was actually a reason why Chavez didn't want to do it.

They watched movies taped off television for rest of the afternoon, and then they had dinner with Munson's family and lied about where they were going that night. Officially they were playing pool and videogames at the rec center but in reality Munson was using his fake ID to buy them a bottle of Jack Daniels so they'd have something to offer at the bonfire party on the beach.

The first couple of hours were awesome. Chavez got fucked up beyond recognition and talked to complete strangers with a confidence that didn't rightly belong to him. The wind was up, fierce off the ocean and slicing chill through Chavez's clothes, and he tipped closer to the huge fire unconsciously. Twice, he had to be tugged back to a safer distance.

Then Chavez crashed down next Zito sitting cross-legged on the sand, alone for the moment.

"Hey man, what's going on?" Chavez said, letting his shoulder thump against Zito's.

Zito shifted, angled away. "Nothing, I was gonna get a beer," and he made to stand up but Chavez planted a hand on his shoulder, pressed him down.

"No, come on, what? Hang out for a second, talk to me."

Chavez threw his arm around Zito, mostly thinking of him as an anchor, a fixed point. Zito jerked, his hand on his knee flinching as if to shove Chavez away but then he didn't.

"What do you want?" Zito asked, impatient.

"Talk, just talk to me," Chavez said, racing his eyes all over Zito's tense face, his life-altering mouth.

"Get off me." Zito shrugged him off. "Not interested in your bullshit right now."

"What?"

"Seriously fuckin' sick of it, actually."

"What're you talking about?" Chavez's voice cracked slightly, and Zito glanced at him, flitted his gaze back to the fire.

"You're either all in or you're out, okay? You fuckin' get me?"

Chavez shook his head, feeling desperate in the way his hand sank clenching in the sand. "No, I, I don't."

"You do. That stuff, that, that fuckin' sneaking around and lying and shit. And then you won't even get me back for blowing you, it's fucked up."

Chavez reached out and latched on to Zito's arm without realizing what he was doing. He squeezed too tight, imagined veins and muscle smashed together under skin.

"Shut your mouth," he hissed, eyes darting around for witnesses, eavesdroppers. In terror, Chavez caught sight of Munson on the other side of the fire, a flickering glance through flame.

Zito ripped his arm out of Chavez's hold, mouth twisted up, everything exaggerated because he was drunk, they were both drunk again.

"You don't tell me what to do," Zito snapped, too loud, still too fucking loud. "You don't come over here like it's all _normal_ , just fuckin' talk to me like you don't know what happens."

"Shut _up_ ," Chavez said, begging with a sneer on his face.

Zito didn't like that, and he tore his hand through the beach, whipped sand at him. Chavez yanked backwards, pushed to his knees and then too quickly to his feet, blood rushing and his perception separating into narrow shifting tiers, rising and lowering swift and soundless.

Against every instinct he had for self-preservation, Chavez's eyes flew to the far side of the fire where Munson was blurred by sparks and heat shimmer, and he couldn't tell if Munson was watching. Chavez had to get the fuck away, walls closing in on him even under this wide-open sky.

He staggered away, sucking in deep breaths in an effort to clear his head. Zito came tagging after him, stuck to Chavez's shadow and spitting taunts and curses, but Chavez couldn't listen to him right now.

There were long chunks of wood separating the beach from the parking lot, like a telephone pole cut up and laid out in a straight line, and Chavez tripped, would have fallen full-out if Zito hadn't caught the back of his shirt and kept him upright.

Chavez spun on him. "The _fuck_ , Barry?"

Zito shook his head roughly. "No, this is 'cause of you."

"Motherfucker." Chavez paced away, between smooth metal lines and then up the ranks of extinguished taillights. Zito followed him, his glare a tangible thing on the back of Chavez's neck. "Don't talk about that shit in front of hella people, or are you too drunk to remember that, that's the first fucking rule."

"That _you_ made up." Zito crowded him, backing Chavez against a Volvo station wagon that was indeterminately colored in the yellow parking lot light. "Whole goddamn thing has been how you want it, just 'cause you gotta be so fucked up about everything, but Ricky, you fuckin' jerk, you listen to _me_ now."

And Chavez would have, whatever Zito wanted to say he would have stood for it, but instead Zito shoved him up against the Volvo and kissed him, pressed Chavez's mouth open and kissed him like a tidal wave was spreading its shadow over them, like this was the only thing they had time for.

Chavez arched up into him, pure instinct, and licked hard across Zito's tongue, tilted his face when Zito slid a hand into his hair and positioned him how he wanted. He was wound up so high, so fast, this electrified blank where his mind used to be. It never felt safe, never the kind of feeling he could trust.

Zito broke away, black hooded eyes and wet panting mouth, his hand still deep in Chavez's hair.

"Okay?" Zito asked, gasping but trying not to show it. "You understand me?"

And Chavez nodded, staring at Zito's face as tremors jittered through him. There was a crawling feeling like fire ants in the base of his skull, the distinct sense of being watched but Chavez didn't think it was real. They were alone, fifty yards from the fire and hidden among the cars, and because no one else could see, Chavez swore to do anything Zito wanted.

*

So now Chavez was in it up to his throat. Now it was quicksand.

Zito showed up at his bedroom window in the small hours of a weekday morning. There was no need to say anything as Chavez helped Zito climb off the desk, helped him take off his shirt and push down his track pants. Zito ducked forward to bite kisses off Chavez's mouth, half-falling onto the bed and dragging Chavez down on top of him. They got real good about staying quiet.

Zito stayed for a few hours, napping but never really sleeping, piled together because they weren't fit to share a twin bed. Chavez wasn't comfortable but didn't want to move, his head on Zito's chest and their legs tangled together. They still didn't talk and Chavez was so ridiculously okay with that. He stayed in bed when Zito left, watching him kneel on the desk to slide the window open, half-smiling when Zito looked back over his shoulder for a lame little wave goodbye.

On nights when Munson had gone to see his girl, Chavez and Zito holed up with sleeping bags in the attic and surf blankets in the back of the car, magazines and snack food and whiskey in a brown paper bag. Hours and hours passed without Chavez really noticing, screwing around with Zito and resting for a half-hour or so in a contented muddle, and then screwing around some more. It didn't feel like anything was happening, everything very quiet and the dust heavy on the floorboards, but the time went so quickly.

They did everything now. Zito showed Chavez how suck a guy off, told him from his knees, "Just pay attention, all right, watch this," and he couldn't ask that of Chavez mere seconds before licking up the length of his cock and then sucking in the tip, sinking down slow and devastating, eyes on Chavez with his eyebrows angled up: _you see? you gettin' this?_

Chavez was having trouble just remaining upright. Learning from Zito's technique wasn't exactly high on his list of priorities. He got by okay when it was his turn, anyway. It wasn't difficult; Zito went immediately to pieces every time Chavez got on his knees, became a writhing stuttering wreck with his head tossed back, one hand huge and stabilizing at the base of Chavez's head. Chavez hadn't realized he could do that to another person, even to someone as easily ruinable as Barry Zito.

It was late March, a Sunday afternoon with rain pounding on Chavez's car, and they were parked on top of six stories, obscured from the world by the concrete and weather. The echoing clatter on the roof and windows filled up Chavez's ears and his head was foggier than the steam colonizing the windows.

Zito went down on him until all Chavez could do was huff groans and roll his hips and gnaw on his lip, and then Zito was shifting up, straddling his body with one hand on Chavez's dick and the other flat on his chest. Chavez gasped up at him with his eyelids peeled back, his whole being rapt on what Zito was doing.

Zito muttered, "Hold on, just-" with his face screwed up in concentration, and then he moved forward and down, fingers pressing and guiding until Chavez was in, and then he was _in_ , pushing up too hard and fast and working a rough sound out of Zito but neither of them paused. Chavez thrust again, grinding his hips and Zito made this choked moaning laugh, crumpling down and rubbing his hand over Chavez's face, through his hair.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," Zito managed, all thick and uneven. His mouth hung slack, his body moving in rhythm with Chavez's own, rocking down and back and forth.

Chavez could barely nod. He had a death grip on Zito's arms and he was fucking into him again and again, pleasure spiraling through until he was crazy from it, mindless. It was so good he kept forgetting to breathe.

It didn't last very long, which was probably to be expected. Chavez came so hard he jammed his head into the car door, and then Zito came while laughing at him, his mouth open against Chavez's. Something tilted badly askew in Chavez at that moment, a weltering rush of euphoria and pain and a bizarre twisted nostalgia at hearing that lightened note in Zito's laugh. Chavez never felt quite right after that.

But they lay together in a heap in the backseat, long minutes with their clothes scattered in the footwells and sweat drying sticky on their skin. After a minute Zito sleepily raised his hand.

"High-five for no longer being virgins."

Chavez snorted, slapped limply at Zito's hand. He could feel Zito grinning, mouthing without intent across the edge of his collarbone.

"Just warn me next time, huh?" Chavez said. He threaded a hand through Zito's hair, looked up at the backwards storm through the slow-clearing window.

"Consider yourself warned," Zito answered immediately. "From now on, we're going to be doing that an awful lot."

It thrilled Chavez, a stupid reaction because of _course_ they would be doing it again: you couldn't have sex for the first time ever and then just _stop_. Visions danced in his mind, places and positions and Zito bent over the dugout bench. It made him dizzy, and he was glad he was already lying down.

Then they had to go back to school and waste hours of their youth sitting in rows in low-ceilinged rooms before being allowed back onto a baseball field. The everyday world of class, the smell of whiteboard ink and ammonia from relentlessly clean floors, it started to seem vaguely unreal, overexposed and formulaic like a poorly-written stage show. Chavez couldn't stand being shut up indoors all the time. There were people _everywhere_ , forty students to a room and making him claustrophobic, oxygen always on the verge of running out.

There were all sorts of things plaguing him right now; school was just the most pervasive. Chavez couldn't talk to anybody these days, his timing shot and his mind gridlocked whenever he asked it for something intelligent to say. He was edgy and defensive because all he could think about was sex, sex in every way with every single person he saw, and he was sure it showed in everything he did. Zito had made him single-minded, obsessed just like every other guy he knew, and Chavez didn't know how anybody ever got anything done. He didn't like being like this, dominated so entirely by the wicked things his body wanted to do, leashed by his darkest instincts.

But there was the team, and that counted for a lot.

Chavez was just recently as tall as his older brother, and he could hit anything now. Secretly he loved the new broadness of his shoulders, the subtle difference in the way strangers looked at him that said he looked like a man now, at long last. Scouts in sports coats with tanned faces interrupted by the shape of sunglasses hung around the field to talk to him after practice and Chavez stood up straight, looked them square in the eye. This particular dream was falling into place and that was the most important thing. Baseball was going to save his life.

Sprints were always the first and last drill of the day, as the sun went down over the blocky buildings of the high school, the team running from the baseline to the fence and back again in a staggered ever-shifting row. Guys fell out in ones and twos, collapsing to whoop for air on the grass until the outfield was scattered with bodies like victims of a poison gas attack. Zito was one of the first to give; he hadn't had any wind even before he started smoking pot every weekend. Chavez and Munson stayed in, racing side by side and shooting each other taunting grins.

Eventually it was just them and the Nakamura twins and red spots were exploding in Chavez's eyes, so he folded into a long skidding slide. He came to a stop, arms and legs sprawling out, and Munson dropped next to him, sweat-soaked shirt showing his chest heaving, panting huge and open-mouthed. Immediately Chavez was picturing Munson stripped and spread out with his heart beating so fast he shuddered all over.

As always, the idea freaked Chavez right the fuck out. He slammed his eyes shut, dug his teeth into the inside of his lip, staying just shy of breaking skin but the sting was almost worse for that, and Chavez welcomed it fervently, desperate to be reconditioned.

"You. Lose," Munson attempted too soon, short breath whistling through his voice.

Chavez waved a dismissive hand at him, lungs feeling deflated and his pulse going as fast as techno. "'s not a race."

"It's always a race."

Chavez crushed the trimmed grass between his fingers, smashed his palm down flat. His eyes were closed but somehow the shrinking sunlight snuck in anyway, molasses-thick and the color of overripe oranges. Weariness washed against him, breaking hard against the cliffs of bone.

"What're we doing tonight?" Munson asked, mostly recovered now.

Zito flashed through Chavez's mind, Zito in the seldom-used boys' room on the far side of the portables, shut up in a stall with Chavez and standing between each other's legs, four dirty sneakers in a pattern. Zito had Chavez pressed up against the wall, jeans tugged off his hips so Zito could rock and rub against him, and Zito had said, hoarse and punctuated with sharp inhales, "Tonight we're going swimming at the reservoir and I'ma fuck you in the water."

Chavez answered Munson, "Nothing, I don't know."

"C'mon, we haven't hung out in like a week."

"Yeah, whose fault is that?"

A crooked silence fell, and Chavez cursed his stupid goddamn mouth. There was a crawling itch on the back of his neck; Zito was watching him from somewhere.

"Don't hate the player, man, hate the game," Munson said, almost pulling off a light-hearted tone.

Chavez smiled, but only because he was expected to. He sat up, squinting and shielding his eyes as if it were midday instead of nearly dusk. Munson shifted so that his cleated foot clicked against Chavez's, and Chavez wondered what was keeping Munson's girlfriend busy tonight, relatives in from out of town or a cello recital or something like that. Chavez was getting pretty used to this second-choice feeling.

"Anyway, you keep busy," Munson said like he could convince them both. "And you got Barry."

"I don't, I--why do you keep saying that?"

Munson looked away, lips pressed into a seam. His hand was balled up in a fist on the grass. His shoulders twitched, just hinting at a shrug.

"Because it's true." Munson got abruptly to his feet, his shadow stretched out twenty feet long across the grass. "I gotta shower, I stink."

" _Hey_ ," Chavez said, caught off-guard by the edge in his voice, the stark burr of panic running under his skin. Munson's eyes fell down on him reluctantly, face shuttered and arms wrapped around his chest. Chavez hated not knowing what was going on inside Munson's head, but he couldn't think of a way to say that without sounding creepy.

Then Zito came up, sneaking like he was hoping to ease into the conversation undetected, giving Chavez a narrow side-eyed look and grinning at Munson, slapping him on the back.

"Little Naki won, so we're going in," Zito said, jerking his head back towards the gym.

Chavez was still staring at Munson. Munson was looking at nothing in particular, a flush coloring his ears. Zito offered his hand and Chavez took it without thinking, allowing himself to be pulled upright. A brief expression of pain crunched Munson's face, and he turned away awkwardly, ducking his head.

Chavez said, "Munce," but Munson didn't look back. A clear sharp feeling of remorse drained Chavez, emptied him out as he watched Munson walk away.

Beside him, Zito exhaled, started to say something but stopped half a syllable in. Chavez was too aware of him, a buzzing sensation in his fingertips.

"What you said about the reservoir earlier, were you serious or just fuckin' around?" Chavez asked without looking at him.

Zito took his time, plainly parsing the best answer out of a multitude of possibilities. "I was serious."

"Okay." Chavez rubbed a hand across his face, his shoulders falling on a sigh. He kept forgetting how tired he was until he almost passed out. "I guess that's okay."

Zito said, "But-" and then nothing else. Chavez risked a glance at him and Zito was clenching his teeth, a tiny hollow formed in his cheek. A glassy sheen covered his eyes like a man withstanding torture, and it occurred to Chavez for the first time that Zito might not be dealing with this thing any better than he was. Zito might be gay, but he hadn't gotten a chance to do much about it before Chavez came along. Zito was still only fifteen years old.

They were two blind guys walking hand-in-hand, and that image wouldn't shake free, jammed in Chavez's head like a chorus: him and Zito in dark glasses with their fingers intertwined, miles of green grass spread out like an ocean around their very small island.

*

Over spring break Chavez went to Mexico with his family and didn't speak to either of his best friends for a week. He ate a million tortas and ten glass bottles of Coke a day, real Mexican Coke that was sold in the taco trucks back home but tasted better down here, the sun tropical in its strength. People kept talking to him in Spanish and he had to say again and again, "Sorry, _inglés, no español_ , um, sorry."

His skin got two shades darker and his anxiety level cranked unbearably high, near homicidal after thousands of miles spent in the family minivan, stultifying nights doubled up with his siblings in the tiny spare rooms of their distant relatives. There were crucifixes hammered over the beds, on at least one of every four walls, and Chavez felt like he was being stalked, haunted by the brokenhearted eyes of the man on the cross.

It was a six-hour drive to get from Chavez's great-aunt's house to Tijuana, and then another three hours waiting in line to get over the border into the States, all of them going stir-crazy, marinated and boiled by the pounding sun, the stale air-conditioner air. Neither of his brothers was talking to him because he'd laughed when they'd gotten sick after being dumb enough to drink the water. Chavez sat in the far back with his Walkman headphones on even after the batteries ran out, watching the people selling fruit and sodas and ceramic statues through open car windows.

By the time they got home, Chavez was strung out worse than a speed freak, all snappish answers and bug eyes. He barely took the time to throw his duffel bag onto his bed and change his shirt, then hurried past his dad and mom exhaustedly sharing a beer in the kitchen, burst out the back door and ran the three-quarters of a mile to Zito's house. His legs tried to cramp and stutter, shocked after the week of relative inactivity, but Chavez shoved past it, longer strides and faster, _faster_ , cool clean breeze off the ocean and Chavez thought about what a wonderful thing it was, this ability to run really fast whenever he wanted, and how he should be more thankful.

He felt the heavy boredom and irritations of the week fall off his back like shedding a coat of mail, and now nobody could catch him.

Zito's house was dark and both his parents' cars were gone from the driveway, and Chavez's mood plummeted back down.

"You fuck, be fucking home," he muttered, and circumnavigated the house peering in the windows, kicking at the doors. It was nothing but shadows inside, and Chavez's stomach was starting to hurt. He yanked futilely at a locked window, swallowing back something sour.

Zito said, "Are you trying to break into my house?"

Chavez whipped around. Zito was leaning in the door of the detached garage, his hair soft-looking and sticking up in tufts like he went to sleep with it wet. The sight of him, long legs in gray sweatpants and arms crossed over his chest with his shoulders looking broader than they'd been a week ago, hit Chavez like a line drive to the back of the head. Every nerve ending he had sparked, his mouth suddenly desert-dry. He was across the short bit of grass in a half a second, his hand moving naturally for Zito's side.

"Is Munson here?" Chavez asked him, voice already hitching.

Zito's eyes had gone big and swiftly dark, and he shook his head, took a step backwards before Chavez could push him. Chavez stayed close, slammed the door behind them. He was staring at Zito, that perfect face of his and how black his eyes could look in dim light and how badly Chavez wanted to fuck him, like his heart would explode otherwise, and Zito said as if amazed, "Jesus, look at you," as Chavez pushed him down on the couch and climbed on top.

Somewhere in the background Chavez could hear the Padres game being broadcast. He didn't look to see if it was the TV or the radio. Right this second, he didn't even care what the score was.

He tugged Zito's hips until Zito was on his knees, bent over with his hands braced on the arm of the couch. Chavez took off his shirt and pushed Zito's up as far as it would go, laid his body down on Zito's back and the feel of it made them both groan. Zito's fingers dug hard into the arm of the couch, and Chavez fucked him just like that, his face buried in the curve of Zito's shoulder, panting against his throat.

Zito kept moaning and cursing and it made Chavez crazy, made him want to fill Zito's mouth with his fingers, press his face into the rough plaid of the couch. Chavez was fucking him wildly, without rhythm, a dull slapping sound when their bodies met and he couldn't think for how good it was, couldn't do more than snatch gasps out of the air.

Then it overcame him, and he went skyrocketing, came crashing down hard. He rolled off Zito's back and fell gracelessly to the floor. Zito laughed at him, kinda hysterical and reaching for Chavez so fast he fell too, landed arms and legs and infinitely dangerous, his skull clocking into Chavez's hard enough that stars blasted through his head.

Zito was babbling, hands flying all over Chavez's wrecked jeans and half-revealed body. "Why the fuck did you go, what's so special about Mexico, _fuck_ , c'mere, like that, just like that, okay."

Chavez slid down, hands clamped on Zito's hips and a low hum shivering out of him, unbelievably happy to be alive right now. Zito said, "Oh I missed you, god _damn_ ," and Chavez grinned up at him, his chin resting in the hollow of Zito's hip.

"Good to see you too, dude," Chavez told him, and proceeded to suck him off in about fifteen seconds, Zito's hand cupping his jaw with his thumb tucked alongside his dick in Chavez's mouth. Chavez closed his eyes because he wanted to watch Zito come apart but he knew he couldn't; he was at the exact limit of what he could bear.

After that, they went through a rudimentary clean-up and then lay on the floor shoulder to shoulder, catching their breath and listening to the baseball game. The Padres were winning. Outside the sky was the bruised color of twilight.

"Hey," Zito said eventually, sounding sleepy and content. His fingers nudged into Chavez's. "Stick around for dinner, yeah? My dad's making lasagna."

"Yay," Chavez answered, widened on a yawn. He wanted to take a nap, daydreaming of the blue pinstripes wallpapering Zito's room. Zito had a big soft baseball pillow, round and flat with the red stitches worn smooth as silk by the years, and Chavez would be asleep as soon as his head came to rest.

"And then Munce was gonna come over to watch the basketball game," Zito said, fiddling with Chavez's hand like he wanted to link their fingers or something gay like that.

"Oh, um," Chavez said, and sat up. His head spun with the rush of blood and he grabbed hold of the couch, very confused for a second. "That's, uh, I didn't know about that."

Zito squinted at him, a wariness tinting the edges of his expression. "Do you not want to hang out with him or something? Because that would be extremely out of character for you."

Chavez got back onto the couch and then shifted to the far side to snag his shirt, sniffing it out of habit before pulling it over his head. He felt sticky and kinda gross, but he couldn't really see himself asking to use Zito's shower, feeling obscurely that it would hurt Zito's feelings somehow.

"I just haven't talked to him," Chavez said, not answering any question in particular.

"Yeah, I noticed that. We were expecting postcards, you lazy motherfucker."

Chavez shrugged, left his shoulders hunched slightly. "I was busy, is all."

"Whatever." Zito put his sweatpants back on and stood up, scowling at the radio chattering away mindlessly. "You and him need to bury the hatchet, anyway. It's getting obnoxious."

"What? We're not--there's no hatchet to bury. We're not fighting or anything."

"You kinda are. It's hard to see sometimes, but it's there." Zito shook his head, plainly not enjoying this conversation. "And in the meantime, you can leave me the fuck out of it."

"You brought it up," Chavez said, unjustly accused.

"Oh, well then, excuse the hell outta me."

Chavez stood, cut off at the knees and glaring without power, nothing to back it up and they both knew it. His face was hot, his skin feeling shiny and too tight. Zito glared right back at him, rumpled and pissed off, crazy to think that fifteen minutes ago Chavez had had him bent double and begging.

"Maybe I'll just go home," Chavez said, trying to be neutral about it but Zito was clearly spoiling for a fight, shooting back:

"Yeah, run away, that's about right for you."

"What the fuck, man?" Chavez's voice broke but he wasn't paying attention to that. "The fuck do you want me to say?"

Zito's face got stormy, and he said in a chilled tone, "Many, many things."

Chavez didn't want to be the first to look away, but how could be expected to keep looking at Zito after that?

His eyes darted to the floor, and he busied himself getting his shoes back on, his back turned to Zito but Chavez could still feel him watching. There was this frequency Zito gave off, this very distinct sensation in the back of Chavez's neck.

"Look," Chavez said, trying very hard. "I like you. I mean, you're cool, this is all cool with me. Okay?"

"Are, are you serious?" Zito asked, disbelief in his voice but not for the reasons Chavez might have expected. " _That's_ your big confession?"

"What?" Chavez was on the defensive, never got anything right, and he wanted to get the hell out of here so badly it was building like a pent-up scream in his chest.

"I kinda figured you liked me, man, what with the whole best friends and sleeping together thing," Zito told him as if explaining something to a very young child. "I'm just waiting for you to connect the motherfucking dots on that shit."

"Don't say that," Chavez said under his breath, feeling hushed on the inside so that was how it came out.

Zito flapped a hand at him, half-turned away in a sorrowful kind of disgust. "Jesus, just get lost. You're fuckin' killing me here."

Not too proud to flee, Chavez took the out at once, busting out of the garage without looking back. The sun had gone down and the world was a much more sinister place, but Chavez could outrun almost anything, anyway.

*

Zito was cold to him for the next week or so, although at least fairly creative about it. He made up club meetings and emergency study sessions so he didn't have to eat lunch with Chavez and Munson. He hung around with Tony Duncan at baseball practice even though Duncan had been an arrogant prick since T-ball, and Chavez in particular hated him like fire.

Munson took everything Zito said at face value, but he didn't know what Chavez did. It was worrisome, terrifying in a bizarrely mild way, how Zito could shut him out so completely and how it felt like an echo, something sad and far away like that.

Chavez and Munson fell back into their old patterns, interrupting each other's stories and talking in their pigeon language that only made sense to two sets of ears on the planet. They traded their cookies at lunch, pooled their change to get a Twix bar from the vending machine. Licking chocolate off his fingers, Chavez felt about nine years old again, sitting on the curb outside the Circle-K with melting candy and his knees scabbed just like his best friend's.

Saturday night they went to a party at Tim Hudson's house, Spanish-style place with tile floors and white stucco all around, jello shots in every color of the rainbow and kids smoking weed out of soda cans in the backyard. Chavez got unapologetically fucked up, feeling certain that he'd earned it.

Munson was at his side the whole night. He'd broken up with the St. Catherine's girl and his eyes followed every halfway pretty girl, reaching to grip Chavez's arm excitedly every time he got a smile in return. Munson drummed his fist on Chavez's shoulder, elbowed him in the ribs, a little more hands-on than he usually got and it was making Chavez dizzy. Chavez kept drinking, liking the way things shattered in patterns like stained glass, like a kaleidoscope.

Zito was there too, in the background and corners, but Chavez wasn't looking for him. Zito was stupid, obviously wrong about Munson and Chavez because look at them, look at Munson's arm around Chavez's shoulders and their hips knocking together, look how Munson let his head fall back and to the side to speak into Chavez's ear over the thudding music, the huge cloud of gibberish gathered from everyone in the room. Look at that smile on Munson's face.

Chavez would be totally cool just leaning against a wall for the rest of the night, bleary eyes watching the kids with their sweaty interchangeable faces clogging in and out of doorways. He didn't like house parties as a general rule, but maybe that was because he inevitably ended up lost in the crowd.

Munson drained his beer, held out the red plastic cup to Chavez with a familiar do-me-a-favor-because-you-love-me look on his face. It fit him well, smoothed out his face and etched his mouth into a neat little smile. He hadn't shaved in a week or so, and dirty-blonde scruff shadowed his expression.

"Get me another, huh?"

Chavez gave him a look. "Are your legs broken?"

"Aw, Ricky." Munson slumped against the wall, rolled his head so that his eyes blinked up at Chavez, innocent and imploring. "It is like a whole new level of drunkenness over here. I don't think I'd make it back. Not intact, anyway."

Chavez got distracted staring at the gleaming line of Munson's neck, mind wandering off into a world where he could tip over and lick the sweat off and Munson would sigh and shudder, let his eyes fall closed.

He snapped out of it, twitching and almost dropping his beer. "I. I don't think I'm doing any better, man."

Munson shook his head, amusingly uncoordinated and bumping his chin on Chavez's shoulder. "I think you are. I think you got it all figured out."

Chavez pushed his hand into Munson's hair, sticky and stiff with the gel he'd borrowed from Zito, that stuff that smelled like liquor made from apples. Chavez was drunk and so it was okay.

"It is ridiculous how not true that is," Chavez told him, hiccuping over a laugh. Munson grinned at him, that heartbreaker smile of his closing a fist in Chavez's stomach.

"I see right through you," Munson said, so certain his eyes shone. "There's nothing about you I don't know."

Chavez broke out laughing, so fast and sharp that it actually hurt. It rattled through him, frightening in its intensity and he must have sounded hysterical because Munson was looking at him with sudden concern. Chavez shook his head, let his hand drag out of Munson's hair, too hard and making Munson hiss between his teeth. Chavez grabbed Munson's shoulder, weaving on his feet and trying to get himself under control.

But then Munson shoved him off, sudden drunk anger contorting his face. "Don't you fuckin' laugh at me, Eric."

Chavez shook his head again, half-frantic now but he couldn't stop laughing. It had dug claws into him; it was going to tear out his lungs.

"Quit it, you son of a bitch." Munson punched him in the chest and Chavez dropped his beer, splashing on both their sneakers. " _Fuck_. Stop, shut your goddamn mouth."

Chavez bit down on the inside of his lip, past the first nauseating sting of pain, broke the skin and let blood fill his mouth. The wild laughter tapered, and he was able to jam it back down at last. He couldn't look at Munson, Munson who was so sure of him, so completely fooled.

"Sorry," Chavez managed. "'m drunk."

"Yeah," Munson said in a flat tone, holding himself gingerly against the wall like he was injured. "I just bet you are."

"Don't be mad at me, Munce," Chavez said, and it was very quiet but he could tell Munson heard by how he flinched.

Munson didn't say anything. He fixed his eyes sightlessly across the room, his hand flexing on the plastic cup, denting it out of shape. Chavez stared at him, strung up and helpless. He wanted to say he was sorry some more, but Munson didn't want to hear it, and anyway, Chavez didn't really know what he was apologizing for. He didn't know why he'd been laughing.

"You know me," Chavez said, almost begging now. "Of course you know me, you're my best friend, you've always been. I shouldn't have laughed, and I won't anymore. I didn't mean to fuck it up, Munce, please."

He reached for Munson, hand settling briefly in the bend of his arm but then Munson pulled away, and it felt like he took Chavez's skin with him.

"It's okay," Munson said quick, lying. His throat clicked as he swallowed. "Let's just. It's nothing. It's fine."

Chavez curled his hands into fists, wishing he could bite his knuckles bloody, punch the wall until the bones in his fingers were pulp. Munson would see then, riding in the back of the ambulance with Chavez laid out on the white stretcher, he'd have to admit that there was nothing okay about _any_ of this.

Instead Chavez said, "I'm gonna get you that beer," and took the cup out of Munson's hand, consciously not letting their fingers brush because he didn't Munson to pull away from him, not ever again.

Munson's mouth pressed down into a thin seam, and he looked like he was about to cry, which scared Chavez worse than anything that had happened so far. Munson's head moved in an aborted jerk, and Chavez had to get away from him, he was gonna do something crazy if he didn't get the fuck away.

There were people everywhere. Chavez shouldered his way through, spilling people's drinks and tromping on their toes. Someone squawked and kidney-punched him but Chavez didn't let that slow him down. He got snatches of fresh air, momentary jags of clarity.

The backyard was only marginally better than inside, the music mostly just bass now and kids packed five-deep around the keg. Chavez reeled away, not ready to throw himself into that particular breach just yet.

It was darker over by the fence, and so he didn't notice Zito standing there at first. Then a lighter sparked and Zito's face appeared beyond the dancing flame, a half-smoked jay tucked in the corner of his lip.

"Oh no," Chavez said without thinking.

Zito's eyes narrowed, and the lighter went out as he picked the jay out of his mouth and said, "Fuck you too."

"No, I didn't--that's not what I meant."

"What the fuck ever, dude." Zito replaced the jay, lit it vengefully. Chavez's eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see Zito's cheeks hollow as he inhaled. On a tumbling outpour of smoke, Zito said, "Gotten used to you being an asshole, anyway."

Chavez tensed, a humiliating sense of injustice making him feel like a child. He wasn't an asshole, he was sure of it. There were a bunch of things wrong with him, but that wasn't one of them.

"So, what?" Zito asked, sneering and smoking the jay in fast nervous drags, not offering Chavez any even though that was patently counter to stoner etiquette. "Did Munson find a girl, or did he just get tired of you hanging on him all the motherfucking time?"

It wasn't close to the worst thing he could have said, but that didn't matter. Another straw, a broken back, and Chavez punched Zito in the face without hesitation.

Zito fell back against the fence, smashing the jay against the wood as he caught his balance and it exploded in orange sparks. Zito's other hand flew to his mouth, and from behind it he screamed:

"You _fuck_ ,"

but Chavez was already wrenching hands in his shirt, slamming him against the boards. "Stop, just fucking stop it," Chavez said, back to begging again even if Zito couldn't hear it.

" _What_?" Zito shoved Chavez off, dark blood on his lip, smearing on his chin. "Stop _what_ , you fucking _coward_."

There was a knot of kids forming around them, some fuckers chanting "fight fight fight." Everybody could see. Chavez's vision blurred with red, terror-colored, and he spun. He ran, even if it proved Zito right, Chavez ran.

He banged through the side gate, out to the driveway and then sprinting as fast as he could, away and away and away.

He ran all the way to the park, better than four miles and all his joints felt jarred loose, his heart thudding like leaden footsteps on his chest. The two-trunk tree stood solid, without judgment, and Chavez could have wept, settled for wrapping his arms as far around one trunk as he could, holding on until his body wasn't shaking anymore. Then he fell down on the grass.

A long time passed. Chavez watched the patchy silver clouds move across the stars, drawn aside like the slowest curtain. He didn't want to think about what had happened but his hand ached from hitting Zito, the inside of his lip still swollen from where he'd bit it to stop laughing at Munson. No math in existence could calculate the amount of damage he'd done tonight. Chavez's head throbbed, a penitential self-inflicted pain.

He was ruining everything. Nothing had been right between the three of them since Chavez and Zito had started screwing around. The balance was all messed up, the threads tying them to each other unraveling slow. Munson was on the outside even if he only sensed it, and as it turned out Chavez didn't like being stuck inside without him. And all he was going to do to Zito was break his heart; Chavez didn't bother trying to deny that, couldn't muster up the energy it would require. He was going to break Zito's heart. He was going to leave Zito bloody somewhere; he already had.

Chavez got to his feet, his legs trembling badly. He walked the long way to Zito's house, filling his pockets with little stones. Chavez cleared his mind, just kept his feet moving one after the other. Eventually he stood beneath Zito's window, just looking for a long moment before tossing the stones one at a time. They clicked off the glass, bounced off the sill on high arcs, and Chavez couldn't breathe, cotton jammed down his throat as the light went on in Zito's bedroom.

Zito stood in the window for a second, looking down at him and Chavez stared back, stock-still in the grass up to his ankles. Then Zito rubbed his face tiredly, pushed open the window and shinnied down the drainpipe along the edge of the house. When Zito got close enough, Chavez saw his lower lip, swollen and bearing a discolored split, and Chavez grimaced, looked away.

"I'm sorry I hit you," he said right away, because that was the thing he was most sure of.

Zito shrugged, calm but distant, shielded. "Didn't hurt."

"Still. Sorry. And I-" Chavez stopped, tried to clear the thickness from his throat. "I don't think we should fuck around anymore."

A muscle ticked in Zito's jaw, and his hand scratched compulsively at his stomach. He had his face tilted upwards, not looking at Chavez.

"Yeah," Zito said tonelessly.

Chavez waited, half out of his mind with anxiety, but Zito didn't add anything. Chavez stumbled over his tongue, saying, "I mean, I, I don't like it."

Zito laughed, totally without humor and almost chilling. "Right."

"No, I don't, I mean I don't like what it's doing to me. To. To all of us."

"Jesus," and Zito covered his face with his hands, dug his fingers into his hair. "Please for the love of god leave him out of it, man, _please_."

Chavez fell silent, sick with shame. It wasn't his fault; Munson had gotten to him so early. Chavez was five years old and he met another boy named Eric, and then everything else had happened.

"This-" Zito started, stopped short, his shoulders falling. "I don't want things to be weird now."

"They won't be," Chavez answered on autopilot. He was pretty sure that was going to end up being a lie.

"And you, you can't act like it was my fault."

"What?"

"You do that sometimes," Zito told him, voice dull and his hand flickering weakly. He was almost hunching, gut-shot and doing all he could not to show it. "I'm, I know you don't mean it. It's just one of those things you do."

Chavez stared at him, a rock plummeting in his stomach, falling and falling without end. He thought about how gravity was exponential and the speed would kill him eventually.

He wanted to tell Zito, that's why, I can't do this to you anymore, which was true, but not the real reason, only its undercurrent. Chavez was aware that Zito should have been the first great love of his life, and instead he was the guy Chavez had fucked around with trying to forget about the first great love of his life, and not one of the three of them deserved that. Chavez didn't know how the fuck he'd let something like this happen to him.

"I'm sorry," Chavez told him, and then he wanted to say it again; he never wanted to say anything else but _sorry_ over and over until Zito forgave him.

But Zito's face pinched up, and he shook his head tightly, looked away. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't have anything else to say to Chavez, and Chavez thought he should leave but his legs weren't working. He wasn't done staring at Zito yet.

They stood like that for a stretching while, almost a full minute in silence, Chavez gazing at Zito and Zito's eyes turned up to the sky. Chavez wondered if he wouldn't be allowed to look at Zito like this anymore, and his eyes fuzzed over with tears but Chavez knew that was just from staring too long.

Eventually Zito sighed low, dropped his head down and skittered his gaze just past Chavez. "I should probably go back up."

Chavez said quietly, "yeah," and thought that he should say something more.

But Zito was smiling sadly, his face pained and his eyes far away. A small ghostly smirk curled the edge of his mouth, made him look jaded and old suddenly, sorely used by the cold cruel world and only regretting that he hadn't been clever enough to see it coming.

"Night, Eric," Zito said, so soft it could kill you, and he turned his back.

Chavez stood in the backyard, watching Zito climb back up the drainpipe and disappear into his dark bedroom. Made of stone, Chavez stayed in the yard for awhile longer, not thinking about anything at all.

Then he walked back home past the lifeless houses and empty parks, the only person left on earth.

*

After Chavez broke up with him, Zito went kinda nuts for awhile.

He spent the money his grandparents sent him for his birthday on hard liquor and drank most of it by himself out in the garage, sleepless until dawn on a school day with the television keeping him company. He faked sick for the better part of a week, pretended to be asleep every time his folks came out to check on him because he knew he'd slur and destroy every word, give himself away clear as confession. When Munson came by to see how he was (always Munson and never Chavez, because even Chavez was not that mean), Zito mumbled through his nose and coughed ostentatiously until Munson called him gross and pulled his T-shirt up over his nose, escaping into the open air and leaving Zito alone again.

There was a certain seedy glamour to going on a genuine bender, Zito discovered. Crazy roaring drunk like every good rock star, unable to tell the daytime talk shows from the late night ones, lying on the floor watching the ceiling spin and spin and spin, and Zito could understand what people saw in this lifestyle. All other concerns were abruptly removed; all he had space to worry about was how fucking drunk he was.

But he had to sober up, if only to take the test for his driver's license (which he failed the first three times anyway), and then it was back to school and baseball and trying to figure out how to be in the same room as Eric Chavez without wanting to kick the shit out of him.

Zito didn't have much luck. Chavez showed up every morning with his hair damp from the shower, rings growing darker around his eyes, and Zito wanted to throw him against walls, hit him until he stopped moving. Zito had expected to be sad but he pretty much wasn't at all, maybe sometimes real late at night when he couldn't sleep, but mostly it was anger, a vast crippling tide that never went all the way out. Zito couldn't help sniping at Chavez and Chavez came right back at him, a petty sneer and viciously intimate insults traded back and forth, and then they went back to ignoring each other. It happened over and over again, until Zito felt mapped with papercuts, bleeding slowly to death from a thousand different places.

The school year was almost over. Zito straightened up as well as he could, pitching and studying through a fog of distracted pain, telling himself, _little bit longer just a little bit longer._ Their team made it exactly one game further in the regional tournament than they had the season before. Chavez wept openly in the dugout after they got knocked out, face wet and eyes bright red and Zito was fascinated, stricken and jealous, wishing he'd been the one to cause it.

And then it was the last day of school, and Tim Hudson showed them show to get onto the roof of the gym, how to jimmy the decades-old padlock with two big paperclips swiped a teacher's desk. They could see the whole school from up there, and Chavez climbed onto the raised edge, listing slowly back and forth like a skyscraper in a hurricane.

Munson said, "Get the fuck down, Chavvy," and looked to Zito for backup, but Zito kept quiet. He kept his eyes on Chavez, trying to gauge gravity's pull on him.

Hudson was beside him, rolling a jay between his fingers to loosen it up, and he leaned over, asked, "Is there something wrong with him?"

Zito nodded, didn't look away from Chavez and his spread-wide arms. Munson stood below him, face tilted up and one hand lifted to block the sun. Munson's other hand was wrapped around Chavez's lower leg, thanklessly saving his life.

"A lot of things, actually," Zito told Hudson, who got the jay going and exhaled a long slender stream of gray into the sky. The stale-sweat smell hazed Zito's mind right away, and he added absently, "It's not just him, though."

Hudson nodded like he could possibly understand that, offered Zito the jay and said, "Well, here, this'll help."

Zito breathed deep of the smoke, kinda nervous because he'd never gotten high at school before but fuck it, they were four hours from summertime and anyway, he could handle this lesser kind of vice.

Munson was still trying to talk Chavez off the ledge. Zito watched them like a favorite movie, a specific scene that made him tear up every time.

Zito spent his days at the beach that summer, finding the world to be at safer distance when he was looking at it through a camera lens. The surfers got used to him always hanging around, christened him with about six different nicknames and let him have a beer sometimes. Eventually one of them, shaggy dark hair that Zito had never seen dry, oak-colored skin cut around the muscles of his stomach, took him under the pier and fucked him to the hushed night-ocean sounds, Zito's knees digging deep holes in the sand. The guy's name was Matt, he was probably twenty-four or twenty-five, and when he wasn't fucking sixteen year olds under piers he ran a surf magazine. He offered Zito two hundred dollars to pick out ten of his photos to publish, and then blew him.

So now Zito had a job. He slept with Matt a few more times even though it was pretty fucked up, because Matt always had weed and Zito had stopped caring about stuff like morality, anyway.

He didn't tell Chavez and Munson the whole story, just showed up at the park with a crooked jay tucked behind his ear, a flask of whiskey Matt had bought for him tucked in the inside pocket of his coat. As soon as Chavez said something mean to him, as soon as the first silence fell awkward and ill-fitting between the three of them, as soon as Munson's eyes darted warily from Chavez to Zito and back again, Zito offered for consideration: let's get fucked up.

Munson and Chavez, they never said no.

It was easier being friends when they were drunk or high, even better when they were both. Chavez looked at Zito again, laughed at his jokes. Zito forgot about how he was supposed to be mad at him, supposed to hate him forever.

And then in July, after a long day swimming in the reservoir and a longer night drinking sprite and gin in Zito's garage, Chavez passed out on the couch and Munson said, "He's so fuckin' wasted," and fell over trying to pull his sneakers on. Zito laughed at him from the floor and Munson picked himself up in a soldierly manner, said, "You gotta look after him, can't let him die in his sleep or anything, okay? It's your job now, man."

Zito nodded, eyelids weighted and his mouth open on a constant yawn. Munson said, "I'm serious, Barry," but he was grinning, and then, "Later skater," as he stumbled out to where his bike was lying on its side in the yard. Zito rolled onto his side and rubbed his cheek on the thin carpet, feeling the concrete just underneath at every hard point of his body, and sank gratefully under, dreamworld wrapping around him like layers upon layers of silk.

He woke up to Chavez whispering his name.

Zito blinked his eyes open and he couldn't see anything; he'd gone blind. He sat up, turned his head instinctively towards Chavez's voice and suddenly Chavez's mouth was on his, fierce and desperate and making shock jerk through Zito's body, flares of heat. Chavez tasted like lemon and lime, like clear things that burned, and for a few mindless ecstatic seconds Zito kissed him back.

But it didn't last.

Zito's brain clicked on and he realized what he was doing, what _Chavez_ was doing, and he yanked backwards, fisted Chavez's shirt and decked him in the mouth.

Fair was fair, after all.

Chavez fought back, and the next day they both wore bruises. Zito stared at the split lip he'd given Chavez, licking his own teeth in search of the rusty taste of blood.

The next day Munson cornered Zito in the sporting goods store, hundreds of gloves hung like pelts of leather on the wall behind them, sorta pissed off and asking, "Did you do that to him?" Zito lied some more. He was getting a lot better at that.

Two weeks later Chavez tried it again.

The party they'd gone to got busted up by the cops and they ended up wandering the neighborhood drinking forties and cackling laughter. They arrived at the school inadvertently, but Munson said, "The field, fellas, yeah?" and so they hopped the fence, wound up lying on their backs in dead center field, talking heatedly about the draft.

Munson lost consciousness first. Zito was close behind him, swimming and losing strength, when Chavez came looming above him.

"Barry," Chavez said in that specific tone, and then he pushed up to his knees, looking down at Zito with a look on his face like the word _please_ made visible, and Zito's heart went caroming through his chest.

They got to their feet and Zito followed Chavez to the dugout, tripping over the shorn grass and blinking fast like the moon was made of fluorescence. Ancient peanut shells crunched to dust under their feet, startlingly loud because it was so quiet. Chavez took Zito's shoulders and sat him down on the dugout bench, straddled his lap without a word.

Zito gripped Chavez's hips, dragged him all the way in. He opened his mouth on Chavez's throat and he didn't care why this was happening. It was happening, and that was enough.

And then it kept happening. Every couple weeks, every time the maddening buzz built up too loud in Chavez's ears, every time Zito got just desperate enough to allow it, every time they got just exactly that drunk. Chavez got silver-eyed and blank and unnaturally quiet, climbed on top of Zito and kissed him until they couldn't talk. Zito shuddered, clenched his arms around Chavez's waist like just holding on would be enough.

It wasn't like it had been. Zito couldn't really see anything ever being like it had been between the two of them.

He tried not to think about it, for the most part. Four months Zito had had Chavez, longer depending on where you wanted to count from, the garage the night of Chavez's sixteenth birthday or that time in the parking lot near the beach or that party in the seventh grade when Chavez had kissed him before they were even really friends. But the last four months were where Zito's mind kept settling: sprawled across Chavez's naked back on top of a crumpled sleeping bag; jammed too tight in one of their twin beds with a pillow smashed flat as home plate between their bodies; how Chavez woke up yawning, fisting sleep out of his eye. Afternoons in the attic with the dust motes settling on their bare skin, nights spent in the back of the car, the rare demolishing rain. The hours and hours and hours Chavez would stay.

Now they got off together in the bathroom while Munson was gone picking up the Chinese food. They never took off their clothes anymore, just unzipped and shifted aside and made it work, mouths full of cotton and hands tied up in denim. Chavez held onto him like Zito was an impossible thing he couldn't have, and that just ripped Zito up.

It wouldn't be like this forever, Zito thought. He wouldn't allow it. Somewhere in the future he would push Chavez away, tell him no and actually mean it, get over this cruddy little teenage affair and start moving in a forward direction again. Zito dreamt of highways and mysterious skylines, a refugee life shining like a mirage on the horizon. It was all still very far away.

So for now he played baseball in the park, and he got wasted with his two best friends, and sometimes he messed around with Chavez like fucking an apparition, and one by one, the days passed.

They went back to school and stayed straight for the first couple of weeks, the pressure building and the classrooms smaller every fucking hour, but then Chavez called Zito a whore in the middle of the quad, in earshot of approximately two hundred people, and after that they started hotboxing one of their cars at lunchtime.

"To make the food taste better," Munson said, and Zito kinda loved him for even attempting a cover story.

Chavez got nostalgic and handsy when he was stoned, pawing at Munson and sometimes Zito too, forgetting where he was. Chavez's eyelids stuck at half-mast, near-black eyes battered as he smiled at everything, slumped boneless against the car door. He told useless stories and terrible jokes and soaked up the sun through the dirty windows, and this was the guy Zito remembered, first for everything and the name that had been carved into his heart. This was what he'd lost. Zito wanted to keep Chavez high for the rest of his life.

The three of them fell out of the car in a billow of smoke, giggling. Chavez, apparently not so much functional yet, stumbled over nothing and would have gone down hard on the asphalt but instead Zito caught the back of his shirt and pulled him upright. Chavez smiled idiotically at him, his eyes rose-colored, said, "Thanks buddy."

Zito nodded, dim happiness strung tight and fragile in him like a shivering thread. Munson locked the car and came over to their side, tossed an arm around Chavez's shoulders.

"All right, boys," Munson said, and he grabbed Zito, pulled him in to hook his free arm around Zito's shoulders, making the three of them a chain. "On we fuckin' go."

THE END


End file.
